THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GENERAL  FRANKLIN  PIERCE 
At  57  years  of  age 


DEDICATION 

OF 

A  STATUE  OF 

GENERAL  FRANKLIN  PIERCE 


AT  THE  STATE  HOUSE,  CONCORD 
NOVEMBER  25,  1914 


ERECTED  AND  DEDICATED 
BY  THE 

STATE  OF  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 


THE  STATUE 


E 


INTRODUCTORY  NOTE 

HISTORY  OF  THE  FRANKLIN  PIERCE  STATUE. 

For  many  years  past  the  great  majority  of  the  people 
of  New  Hampshire,  who  take  pride  in  the  honor  of  their 
state,  and  the  character  and  achievements  of  its  able 
and  distinguished  sons,  have  felt  that  some  fitting 
expression  of  regard  for  the  name  and  fame  of  FRANKLIN 
PIERCE,  fourteenth  President  of  the  United  States,  and 
the  only  native  of  New  Hampshire  to  occupy  the  exalted 
position  of  Chief  Magistrate  of  the  Republic,  should  be 
made,  in  enduring  form,  for  the  benefit  of  generations  to 
£  come,  in  impressing  upon  their  minds  the  fact  that  last- 
2j  ing  public  recognition  of  true  merit  and  noble  service  is 
a  among  the  paramount  duties  of  a  free  people. 

On  several  occasions,  within  the  last  few  years,  attempts 
have  been  made  to  secure  the  passage  of  a  measure  by 
'  the  General  Court  providing  for  the  erection  of  a  suit- 
™  able  statue,  in  the  State  House  park,  as  a  testimonial  of 
«  the  people  of  New  Hampshire  in  honor  of  this  distin- 
guished citizen;  but,  through  partisan  bitterness,  grow- 
4  ing  out  of  the  Civil  War,  and  the  sectional  and  political 
*  controversies  antecedent  thereto  and  resulting  therein, 
g  these   attempts   had   failed,    from   factious   opposition, 
1  though    favored    by    the    majority    sentiment    of    the 
it  people's    representatives,    as    well    as    by    the    people 
j  themselves. 

Fortunately  the  legislature  of  1913,  nearly  fifty  years 
after  the  delivery  of  Lincoln's  immortal  second  inaugural 
address,  with  its  "Malice  toward  none"  and  "Charity 
for  all,"  found  within  its  membership  none  so  imbued 


462428 


with  partisan  rancor  and  prejudice  as  to  offer  sub- 
stantial opposition  to  such  a  just  and  worthy  measure, 
and  the  following  joint  resolution  passed  both  branches 
with  practical  unanimity,  and  was  approved  by  the 
governor: 

JOINT  RESOLUTION  for  the  Erection  of  a  Statue  of 
Franklin  Pierce. 

Resolved,  by  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives  in 
General  Court  convened: 

That  the  governor  and  council  be  hereby  directed  to 
cause  a  statue  to  Franklin  Pierce  to  be  erected  in  an 
appropriate  place  to  be  by  them  selected,  in  the  state 
house  yard,  the  material,  design,  workmanship  and 
dedication  to  be  left  to  the  discretion  of  the  governor 
and  council;  and  that  to  meet  the  expense  thereof  the 
governor  be  authorized  to  draw  his  warrant  upon  the 
treasury  for  a  sum  not  exceeding  fifteen  thousand  dollars. 
Approved  May  13,  1913. 

At  a  meeting  of  the  governor  and  council,  July  1 1,  1913, 
an  advisory  committee,  consisting  of  five  representative 
citizens  of  the  state,  was  appointed  to  act  in  conjunction 
with  that  body  in  the  matter  of  the  erection  of  the 
statue  in  question,  as  appears  from  the  following  copy 
of  record : 

EXECUTIVE  COUNCIL  CHAMBER, 
CONCORD,  July  n,  1913. 

The  Honorable  Board  met  according  to  adjournment. 

Present:  His  Excellency  Samuel  D.  Felker,  Governor, 
and  Councilors  Badger,  Gilman,  Noone,  Sawyer,  and 
McGregor. 

The  Governor  with  the  advice  of  the  Council  made 
the  following  appointments: 

Advisory  Committee  relative  to  the  Franklin  Pierce 
statue:  Franklin  Pierce  Carpenter  of  Manchester,  Wil- 
liam E.  Chandler  of  Concord,  Clarence  E.  Carr  of  An- 


dover,  Edgar  Aldrich  of  Littleton,  David  E.  Murphy  of 

Concord. 

*         *         *         *         * 

A  true  record: 

EDWARD  N.  PEARSON, 
Secretary  of  State. 

A  true  copy  of  record : 

EDWARD  N.  PEARSON, 
Secretary  of  State. 

On  August  7,  1913,  a  joint  meeting  of  the  governor 
and  council  and  advisory  committee  was  held,  Franklin 
P.  Carpenter  being  elected  chairman  and  Councilor 
William  H.  Sawyer,  secretary.  At  this  meeting  it  was 
voted  that  William  E.  Chandler,  Edgar  Aldrich  and 
Franklin  P.  Carpenter  be  a  committee  to  consider  the 
style  of  the  proposed  statue;  to  secure  models,  bids  and 
specifications,  and  to  report  at  some  future  date. 

At  a  meeting  of  the  governor,  council  and  committee, 
October  30,  1913,  it  was  voted  to  invite  Mr.  Augustus 
Lukeman  of  New  York  to  inspect  the  State  House 
grounds  and  confer  with  the  governor,  council  and  com- 
mittee with  reference  to  plans  for  the  statue,  and  that 
Mr.  Carpenter  be  requested  to  inform  Mr.  Lukeman 
and  to  arrange  the  time  for  the  conference,  to  which  time 
the  meeting  was  adjourned. 

On  November  7,  1913,  the  meeting  was  reconvened, 
the  governor,  all  the  councilors,  and  all  members  of  the 
advisory  committee,  except  Judge  Aldrich,  being  in 
attendance,  with  Mr.  Lukeman.  A  discussion  of  plans 
ensued,  and  a  view  of  the  grounds  was  taken,  and  it  was 
finally  voted  to  invite  Mr.  Lukeman  to  prepare  and 
present  to  this  body  a  model  showing  the  general  scheme 
of  the  proposed  monument,  as  outlined  by  him,  for  its 
consideration. 

The  governor,  council  and  committee  met,  with  Mr. 


Lukeman,  December  31,  in  the  Art  room  of  the  New 
Hampshire  Historical  Society  for  an  examination  of  his 
design  and  model,  after  consideration  of  which  they  pro- 
ceeded to  the  Council  Chamber  at  the  State  House, 
where,  in  the  absence  of  Mr.  Carpenter,  who  was  called 
away,  Judge  Aldrich  was  made  temporary  chairman  and 
Mr.  Carr  secretary. 

It  was  voted  that  the  conception,  the  working  model 
and  plans  of  Mr.  Augustus  Lukeman  of  145  West  55th 
Street,  New  York  City,  for  the  proposed  Franklin  Pierce 
statue  be  accepted  at  $14,500,  and  that  Franklin  P. 
Carpenter,  Clarence  E.  Carr  and  David  E.  Murphy  be 
constituted  a  committee  to  draft  proper  contracts,  the 
same  being  subject  to  the  approval  of  the  governor  and 
council. 

The  contracts  were  promptly  drawn,  signed  and 
approved,  October  15,  1914,  being  fixed  as  the  date  for 
completion  of  the  work.  As  time  passed  and  the  work 
progressed,  the  question  of  location  commanded  atten- 
tion, some  division  of  opinion  arising  regarding  the  same, 
but  the  matter  was  finally  settled  in  accordance  with  the 
judgment  of  the  sculptor,  and  in  due  season  the  work  was 
in  position. 

The  monument  is  built  of  granite  and  bronze,  and 
stands  on  the  south  side  of  the  Memorial  Arch,  on  the 
State  House  grounds,  fronting  Main  Street,  on  a  line 
with  the  sidewalk. 

The  scheme  of  the  monument  is  simplified  Greek,  and 
takes  the  form  of  an  exedra  thirty-five  feet  by  twelve 
feet.  The  stylobit,  or  platform,  is  inlaid  with  yellow 
vitrified  brick,  and  flanked  on  either  end  are  classic  stone 
seats,  while  on  the  corners  are  granite  pedestals  on  which 
are  tall  bronze  electroliers.  The  heroic  bronze  statue 
stands  on  a  granite  pedestal  in  the  center  and  a  little  to 
the  back  on  the  exedra,  the  four  sides  of  which  are  suit- 
ably inscribed,  as  follows: 


AUGUSTUS  LUKEMAN 
Sculptor 


On  the  east  side,  or  front — 

FRANKLIN   PIERCE 

FOURTEENTH 
PRESIDENT 

OF  THE 
UNITED  STATES 

On  the  north  side — 

BORN  AT  HILLSBOROUGH,   NEW  HAMPSHIRE, 
NOVEMBER  23,    1804. 

A  LAWYER  WHO  LOVED   HIS   PROFESSION 
AND  WAS  A  GREAT  LEADER   IN   IT 

MEMBER  NEW  HAMPSHIRE   LEGISLATURE 
AT  25    AND  SPEAKER  AT  27 

CONGRESSMAN   AT  29 

UNITED  STATES  SENATOR  AT  32  AND 

RESIGNED   AT   37 

LATER  IN  LIFE  DECLINED  THE  OFFICE 
OF  ATTORNEY  GENERAL  OF  THE  UNITED 

STATES,  THAT  OF  SECRETARY  OF  WAR, 

THE  UNITED  STATES  SENATORSHIP  AND 

THE  GOVERNORSHIP  OF   HIS  STATE. 

PRESIDENT  OF  THE  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

CONSTITUTIONAL  CONVENTION 
PRESIDENT  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES 
DIED  AT  CONCORD,   OCTOBER  8,    1869. 

On  the  south  side — 

BRIGADIER  GENERAL  U.  S.  A. 

PUEBLA 

CONTRERAS 

CHERUBUSCO 

MOLING   DEL   REY 

CHAPULTEPEC 

COMMISSIONER  APPOINTED   BY   GENERAL 

SCOTT  TO  ARRANGE  AN   ARMISTICE 

WITH   GENERAL  SANTA  ANNA 

"HE  WAS  A  GENTLEMAN   AND  A 
MAN   OF   COURAGE." 

ULYSSES  S.  GRANT. 


8 

On  the  west  side,  or  rear — 

ERECTED   BY  THE 

STATE  OF  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

1914. 

The  statue  represents  President  Pierce  standing  in  an 
easy  position  with  his  right  hand  resting  on  a  conven- 
tionalized pedestal  of  fasces  draped  with  the  American 
flag,  on  which  is  also  a  manuscript  with  the  seal  of  the 
state,  while  his  left  hand  rests  against  his  hip.  The 
costume  is  of  the  Fifties,  with  its  high  neckstock  and  soft 
shirt-front,  broadcloth  frock-coat  and  square-toed  boots, 
while  over  his  shoulders  is  thrown  a  military  cloak  of  the 
period. 

The  statue  is  cast  in  United  States  standard  bronze, 
the  alloy  of  which  is  90  per  cent,  of  copper  and  10  per 
cent,  of  tin  and  zinc.  The  weight  of  the  statue  is  2,230 
pounds.  The  granite  pedestal  is  made  of  Concord  gran- 
ite, and  the  entire  work,  design,  plan  and  scheme,  includ- 
ing the  modeling  and  execution  of  the  statue  and  the 
designing  of  the  electroliers  is  the  work  of  the  sculptor, 
Augustus  Lukeman. 

Circumstances  delayed  the  formal  dedication  of  the 
statue,  which  was  finally  arranged  for  November  25, 
with  Hon.  Clarence  E.  Carr  as  president  of  the  day,  Rev. 
George  H.  Reed,  D.D.,  chaplain,  and  David  E.  Murphy, 
marshal.  The  program  included  an  oration  by  Hon. 
Oliver  E.  Branch  of  Manchester,  with  addresses  by 
President  Carr,  Mr.  Carpenter,  Governor  Felker,  Judge 
Aldrich,  ex-Senator  Chandler  and  William  F.  Whitcher 
of  Woodsville,  and  music  by  Nevers'  Third  Regiment 
Band  of  Concord. 

At  eleven  o'clock  a.m.,  on  the  day  set  for  the  dedica- 
tion, a  procession  was  formed  in  front  of  the  Eagle 
Hotel  under  the  direction  of  the  marshal,  headed  by  the 


band,  the  officers  and  speakers  of  the  day,  governor, 
council,  committee  and  invited  guests,  and  proceeded 
to  the  space  in  front  of  the  statue  for  the  unveiling. 

After  the  ceremony  of  unveiling,  it  had  been  planned 
to  introduce  Mr.  Augustus  Lukeman,  the  sculptor,  but, 
Mr.  Lukeman  being  detained  by  illness,  President  Carr 
made  fitting  reference  to  the  disappointment,  and  paid 
a  brief  tribute  to  him  and  his  work.  The  company  then 
proceeded  to  Representatives  Hall,  which,  with  the 
spacious  gallery,  was  entirely  filled,  and  the  speaking 
program  was  fully  carried  out,  the  exercises  having  been 
enlivened  with  music  by  the  band,  opening  with  the 
overture,  "II  Guaranay" — Gomes. 


MISS  SUSAN   H.   PIERCE 


DEDICATORY  EXERCISES. 

MR.  CARR,  INTRODUCING  Miss  SUSAN  H.  PIERCE: 

To  grace  this  occasion  and  assist  us  in  these  cere- 
monies, we  are  fortunate  to  have  with  us  kinsfolk  of 
Franklin  Pierce. 

To  Miss  Susan  H.  Pierce,  daughter  of  Hon.  Kirk  D. 
Pierce  of  the  old  town  of  Hillsborough  and  grandniece 
of  President  Pierce,  fittingly  is  accorded  the  honor  of 
unveiling  this  statue. 


MR.  CARR,  REFERRING  TO  MR.  LUKEMAN: 

By  love  of  art  and  through  long  years  of  labor  is  genius 
developed.  With  us  we  expected  to  have  a  distinguished 
sculptor  who  knows  the  cost  and  ungrudgingly  has  paid 
the  price.  He  was  a  student  of  one  of  the  best  known  of 
the  world's  sculptors,  a  son  of  New  Hampshire,  whose 
advice  in  this  composition  has  been  freely  sought  and 
gladly  given. 

In  the  love  of  his  art,  from  the  concept  of  his  brain, 
and  with  the  cunning  of  his  hand  he  has  wrought  for  us. 
We  behold  his  story  in  bronze,  and  had  he  not  been 
detained  by  illness  we  would  have  gladly  have  welcomed 
here  to-day  its  author, — the  artist  and  sculptor, — Augus- 
tus Lukeman  of  New  York. 


12 


MR.  CARR,  CALLING  UPON  DOCTOR  REED  FOR  THE 
INVOCATION: 

When  the  horror  of  the  cataclysm  across  the  sea  broke 
upon  us,  men  exclaimed,  "Can  this  be  possible  among 
Christian  nations?"  "What  of  our  boasted  Christian 
religion?"  "Is  it  a  failure?" 

In  the  brief  period  since,  we  have  seen  a  million  men 
destroyed,  a  principality  crushed,  an  innocent  people 
ruined.  Unnumbered  sorrows  have  been  added  to  un- 
measured woe. 

But,  behold!  In  spite  of  all,  with  steadied  judgment, 
new  courage,  and  clearer  vision,  we  begin  to  see  and 
understand  the  abiding  strength  of  the  true  spirit  of 
the  Christian  religion. 

All  history  and  all  experience  teach  us  that  however 
false  a  nation's  interpretation  of  that  spirit,  however 
wrong  its  point  of  view,  and  however  far  astray  it  may 
go,  there  is  no  change  in  the  judgments  of  the  Lord  or 
His  purposes.  They  are  true  and  righteous. 

In  the  supreme  moments  to  come  the  world  will  need 
much  and  expect  much  of  American  Christian  citizen- 
ship. 

It  is  fitting  and  proper  then  on  this  occasion,  as  on 
all  public  occasions,  that,  striving  for  the  true  spirit  of 
the  Christian  religion,  we  seek  Divine  help  to  bring  us 
in  harmony  with  Divine  purposes. 

Let  us  join  Doctor  Reed  in  prayer. 


REVEREND  GEORGE  H.   REED.   D.  D. 
Chaplain  of  the  Day 


PRAYER  BY  REV.  GEORGE  H.  REED,  D.D. 

ALMIGHTY  GOD,  our  heavenly  Father,  we  who 
**•  know  not  what  to  pray  for  as  we  ought,  do  now 
seek  the  guidance  of  Thy  Spirit  that  we  may  see  and 
perceive  and  understand  and  remember  the  significance 
of  this  hour. 

May  the  monument  that  we  dedicate  this  day  keep 
us  from  forgetting  the  debt  that  we  owe  to  those  who 
have  gone  before  us,  and  to  those  who  shall  come  after 
us,  and  therefore  to  this  generation,  to  ourselves  and  to 
Thee. 

Hear  Thou  our  prayer  that  as  long  as  this  statue  shall 
stand  in  its  strength  and  dignity,  it  may  remind  the 
young  men  of  each  rising  generation  that  in  the  land 
which  the  Lord  their  God  hath  given  them  it  is  possible 
to  pass  from  the  common  school  and  the  humble  home  to 
the  high  places  of  power. 

But  from  a  generation  of  seekers  after  place,  O  Lord, 
defend  us!  May  men  ever  esteem  fitness  for  office  more 
to  be  desired  than  election  to  office,  and  the  privilege  of 
serving  the  public  the  greatest  honor  the  public  can  con- 
fer upon  them. 

We  thank  Thee  for  the  gifted  men  whose  vision  and 
toil  and  sacrifice  have  made  possible  the  freedom  in  which 
we  rejoice  this  day.  Continue  unto  us  the  mercies 
wherewith  Thou  hast  blessed  our  fathers.  Lead  Thou 
our  leaders.  Grant  unto  the  president  of  this  republic 
and  unto  all  governors,  magistrates  and  judges  the  spirit 
of  wisdom,  of  justice  and  of  mercy. 

Give  unto  all  who  make  and  interpret  our  laws  rev- 
erence for  Thy  laws.  Teach  Thou  our  teachers,  that  the 
men  and  women  of  to-morrow  may  come  forth  from  our 
schools  and  colleges  with  wise  counsel  and  high  resolve 
to  serve  their  country  and  their  God. 


We  pray  for  all  those  who  mould  public  sentiment 
through  the  printed  page,  from  the  platform  and  in  the 
pulpit,  that  they  may  plead  with  sanity  and  boldness 
for  that  which  is  right  in  Thy  sight,  seeking  ever  the  ap- 
proval of  God  rather  than  the  praise  of  men. 

Prosper  all  honorable  industries  and  incline  the  hearts 
of  all  employers  of  labor  to  do  unto  men  as  they  would 
that  men  should  do  to  them. 

Defend  us  all  from  every  unhallowed  ambition  and 
grant  that  with  breadth  of  vision,  fairness  of  judgment 
and  sincerity  of  heart  we  may  finish  the  work  and  fulfil 
the  hopes  of  those  whom  we  hold  in  grateful  remem- 
brance. 

And  all  that  we  ask  for  America  we  seek  for  every 
nation  on  earth.  Especially  do  we  pray  with  one  heart 
and  with  one  voice  for  the  nations  now  at  war.  We 
thank  Thee  for  the  men  in  every  army  who  believe  that 
their  cause  is  just,  and  that  they  serve  the  living  God. 

O  Thou  whose  ways  are  higher  than  our  ways  and 
thoughts  are  higher  than  our  thoughts  as  the  heavens 
are  above  the  earth,  give  Thou  the  victory  to  those  who 
shall  use  it  best.  Turn  all  men  from  the  fierceness  of 
their  anger  and  the  folly  of  their  strife  unto  the  service 
of  Him  who  was  lowly  in  heart,  who  made  himself  of  no 
reputation  and  who  was  willing  to  live  and  to  die  for 
men,  unto  whom  Thou  hast  given  the  name  that  is  above 
every  name. 

In  His  name  we  seek  these  unmerited  blessings,  the 
forgiveness  of  our  sins  and  the  power  to  serve  Thee 
better.  Amen. 


MR,  CARR'S  ADDRESS. 

VT'OUR  Excellency,  the  Honorable  Council,  Members 
of  the  Franklin  Pierce  Statue  Commission,  Ladies 
and  Gentlemen: 

By  Chapter  258  of  the  Session  Laws  of  1913,  the 
General  Court  of  New  Hampshire  adopted  the  following 
joint  resolution: 

That  the  governor  and  council  be  hereby  directed  to  cause 
a  statue  to  Franklin  Pierce  to  be  erected  in  an  appropriate 
place,  to  be  by  them  selected,  in  the  state  house  yard,  the 
material,  design,  workmanship  and  dedication  to  be  left  to 
the  discretion  of  the  governor  and  council;  and  that  to  meet 
the  expense  thereof  the  governor  be  authorized  to  draw  his 
warrant  upon  the  treasury  for  a  sum  not  exceeding  fifteen 
thousand  dollars. 

This  is  the  authority  for  our  action. 

The  Governor  and  Council  invited  to  join  them  as  an 
advisory  commission  to  carry  out  the  will  and  intent 
of  the  General  Court,  Franklin  Pierce  Carpenter, 
William  E.  Chandler,  Edgar  Aldrich,  David  E.  Murphy 
and  Clarence  E.  Carr. 

A  full  account  of  the  work  of  the  united  bodies  will 
be  a  part  of  the  public  records. 

Franklin  Pierce  was  born  in  Hillsborough,  New  Hamp- 
shire, November  23,  1804.  He  was  educated  in  acad- 
emies at  Hancock,  Francestown,  and  Exeter,  and  at  Bow- 
doin  College.  Among  his  classmates  were  Senator  John 
P.  Hale,  Professor  Stowe,  that  wonderful  orator  Sergeant 
S.  Prentiss,  the  poet  Longfellow  and  the  novelist  Haw- 
thorne. Studying  law  with  Levi  Woodbury,  and  at  the 
law  school  at  Northampton,  Massachusetts,  and  with 
Judge  Edmund  Parker,  he  was  admitted  to  the  bar  in 
1827.  He  was  elected  a  member  of  our  legislature  in 


16 

1829,  served  there  four  years,  the  last  two  as  speaker, 
was  sent  to  Congress  in  1833,  and  remained  there  till  his 
election  to  the  United  States  Senate  in  1837.  Owing  to 
ill  health  he  resigned  his  seat  in  1842,  and  returned  to 
New  Hampshire  and  to  his  law  practice.  In  1839,  he 
removed  to  Concord  where  he  ever  after  made  his  home. 
In  1845,  he  declined  an  appointment  to  a  vacancy  in 
the  United  States  Senate,  the  nomination  as  governor 
of  New  Hampshire,  and  an  appointment  to  the  office  of 
attorney-general  of  the  United  States.  In  1846,  at  the 
opening  of  war  with  Mexico,  he  enlisted  as  a  private,  was 
appointed  colonel,  and  March  3,  1847  was  commissioned 
brigadier-general  in  the  volunteer  army.  He  was  com- 
mended for  conspicuous  bravery.  He  resigned  his  com- 
mission at  the  close  of  the  war,  and  in  March,  1848, 
returned  home,  and  by  the  General  Court  of  this  state 
was  voted  a  sword  in  honor  of  his  services.  He  was  a 
member,  and  president,  of  our  Constitutional  Convention 
held  in  1850.  In  January,  1852,  the  New  Hampshire 
Democratic  State  Convention,  against  his  protest,  de- 
clared for  him  as  its  candidate  for  the  Presidency;  he  was 
nominated  in  the  Baltimore  convention  in  June  of  the 
same  year,  and  elected  by  a  large  majority  in  the  Novem- 
ber following. 

He  died  in  Concord,  October  8,  1869. 

Such  is  the  bare  and  naked  outline  of  a  remarkable 
career. 

History  has  measured  his  work  and  estimated  his 
worth. 

Courtly,  brave  and  chivalrous,  he  was  loved  as  few 
men  have  been  loved  in  New  Hampshire,  and  honored 
beyond  any  other  of  her  sons. 

Not  alone  was  Franklin  Pierce  the  only  New  Hamp- 
shire President,  but  he  was  the  last  president  furnished 
by  one  of  the  smaller  states,  unless  we  reckon  New 


CLARENCE  E.   CARR 
President  of  the  Day 


17 

Jersey  as  a  smaller  state.  He  came  near  the  close  of  a 
definite  period  of  our  history  which  was  ended  by  the 
Civil  War;  which,  in  turn,  accustomed  the  nation  to  the 
massing  of  great  bodies  of  troops  or  voters.  That  is, 
the  regiment,  so  to  speak,  ceased  to  figure  in  political 
strategy,  and  we  thought  and  dealt  in  divisions  and 
corps;  in  other  words,  with  larger  bodies  of  men  and 
larger  and  more  pivotal  states.  Have  we  worked 
through  another  period?  Are  we  coming  to  a  third? 
Is  the  division  of  state  lines  to  be  more  and  more  ignored 
as  we  seek  The  Man? 

Is  there  to  grow  out  of  the  present  world-wide  up- 
heaval a  wider  and  better  nationality  with  fading  border 
lines  based  on  the  fatherhood  of  God  and  the  brother- 
hood of  Man?  May  the  sons  and  daughters  of  New 
Hampshire,  be  wise  and  fit.  Our  noblest  and  highest 
duty  is  to  become  good,  upright,  efficient  and  patriotic 
American  citizens. 

It  has  been  said  that  one  of  the  crowning  glories  of  the 
life  of  Stephen  A.  Douglas  was  when,  in  March,  1861,  he 
stood  by  his  great  rival  and  held  the  hat  of  the  after- 
wards martyred  President  during  the  delivery  of  that 
memorable  inaugural,  and  thenceforth  devoted  the  great 
powers  of  his  intellect  and  the  patriotism  of  his  soul  to 
the  cause  of  the  Union. 

We,  too,  might  say  that  one  of  the  crowning  glories  of 
Franklin  Pierce's  career,  illustrating  his  chivalry  and 
foresight,  was  when  in  the  storm  that  followed  Webster's 
seventh  of  March  speech,  he  understood  and  defended 
the  physically  enfeebled  statesman  from  the  bitter  and 
senseless  attacks  of  an  angry  and  misunderstanding 
people.  Subsequent  events  vindicated  Webster's  vision 
and  patriotism  and  honored  Franklin  Pierce  for  his 
understanding  and  his  chivalry. 

It  is  fitting  that  we  place  his  statue  under  the  shadow 


18 

of  our  capitol,  there  to  stand  as  long  as  the  state  stands, 
with  Stark  and  Hale  and  Webster: — Stark  who,  with 
his  New  Hampshire  men,  struck  the  blow  at  Bunker  Hill 
that  gave  heart  and  hope  to  a  cause,  and  the  blow  at 
Bennington  that  made  possible  one  of  the  decisive  battles 
of  the  world,  gave  us  a  nation  and  sent  a  British  king 
back  across  the  sea;  Hale  who  struggled  for  the  freedom 
of  a  race;  and  Webster  whose  mighty  vision  made  pos- 
sible that  broader  field  of  opportunity  and  that  greater 
liberty  which  blesses  our  people  and  will  eventually  bless 
all  the  races  of  men. 

Proud  of  Franklin  Pierce  as  a  citizen,  honoring  him 
with  every  office  in  her  gift,  loving  him  for  the  sweetness 
of  his  ways,  glorying  in  the  exalted  station  to  which  he 
was  called  by  the  voice  of  the  people,  New  Hampshire 
honors  him  again  with  this  statue  to  his  memory.  It 
is  no  light  thing  to  be  thus  honored  by  a  state  that, 
though  it  measures  so  little  in  square  miles  of  territory, 
yet  weighs  so  much  and  has  meant  so  much  in  the  mould- 
ing and  upbuilding  of  a  nation. 

The  tributes  paid  him,  and  to  be  paid  him,  by  strong 
and  sterling  men  opposed  to  the  party  and  theories  of 
government  for  which  he  stood,  attest  his  patriotism, 
the  integrity  of  his  purposes  and  the  charm  of  his  per- 
sonality. 


MR.  CARR,  INTRODUCING  MR.  CARPENTER: 

Among  the  many  citizens  of  New  Hampshire  who  love 
her, — and  we  all  love  her, — and  who  have  been  constant 
in  their  devotion  to  her  interests  and  the  extension  of 
her  enterprises,  is  the  chairman  of  the  committee  called 
in  consultation  by  the  governor  and  council  on  the 
Franklin  Pierce  statue.  His  name  is  an  earnest  of  things 


FRANK   P.   CARPENTER 


19 

done.  He  has  given  time  and  whole-hearted  devotion 
to  this  cause,  and  the  statue  is  properly  in  his  hands 
for  disposition. 

It  is  my  pleasure  to  present  the  chairman  of  the  Pierce 
Statue  Commission,  Honorable  Frank  P.  Carpenter  of 
Manchester. 


MR.  CARPENTER'S  ADDRESS. 

WE  ARE  met  to-day  to  pay  our  tardy  tribute  to  one 
of  New  Hampshire's  noblest  sons,  a  soldier  and  a 
statesman — to  that  one  who,  alone  of  all  the  great  men 
born  in  the  Granite  State,  received  the  highest  honor  and 
bore  the  heaviest  responsibility  to  which  American  citi- 
zenship is  liable.  We  honor  him  to  whom  was  given  the 
task  of  guiding  the  destinies  of  the  nation  when  vast 
forces  were  working  for  the  ultimate  good,  but  which, 
during  his  leadership,  had  failed  to  take  form  and  direc- 
tion. He  assumed  office  on  the  eve  of  that  great  conflict 
which  was  to  wipe  out  human  bondage.  He  was  called  to 
administer  the  nation's  affairs  when  the  southern  half 
of  our  people  were  convinced  the  North  was  intent  upon 
dominating  in  violation  of  constitutional  rights,  and  the 
northern  half  was  equally  sure  the  South  proposed  in- 
definite expansion  of  the  institution  of  human  slavery. 

It  has  required  years  with  their  healing  touch  to  soften 
the  animosities  of  his  time,  to  wipe  out  that  fierce  bitter- 
ness which  enveloped  all  who  were  then  prominent  in 
national  affairs.  To-day  we  hail  this  son  of  New  Hamp- 
shire as  one  who  worked  faithfully  in  performing  the 
duties  of  his  high  office,  and  we  seek  to  perpetuate  the 
memory  of  him  who  did  not  fear  to  stand  for  the  right, 
as  he  saw  it,  and  stand  unflinchingly. 

It  was  given  me  as  a  youth  to  know  him  personally. 
My  father  was  his  friend,  supporter  and  admirer.  It 


20 

has  been  one  of  the  chief  joys  of  my  service  on  this  com- 
mission that  I  could  do  my  part  in  honoring  his  memory. 

It  is  therefore  with  keenest  pleasure,  on  behalf  of  the 
commission  of  which  I  have  the  honor  to  be  chairman, 
to  present  to  you,  and  through  you,  to  the  state,  whose 
generosity  has  made  it  possible,  this  splendid  statue  of 
Franklin  Pierce,  fourteenth  president  of  the  United 
States. 

This  bronze,  heroic  in  size,  is  the  work  of  one  of  Amer- 
ica's foremost  sculptors,  Augustus  Lukeman  of  New 
York  City. 

It  gives  us  in  enduring  form  a  reminder  of  a  life  which 
saw  its  beginning  amid  the  Granite  hills  of  New  Hamp- 
shire, but  which  comprehended  in  its  influence  and 
achievements  our  whole  broad  land.  May  it  always  be 
an  inspiration  to  unselfish  patriotism  and  lofty  ideals  of 
public  service. 


MR.  CARR,  INTRODUCING  His  EXCELLENCY,  GOVERNOR 

FELKER : 

The  dedication  of  this  statue  to-day  marks  but  one  of 
many  noteworthy  achievements  in  New  Hampshire  in 
the  last  two  years. 

The  real  legislative  accomplishments,  the  efficiency  in 
business  conduct  of  affairs  of  state,  and  the  sagacity  and 
economy  of  this  administration  will  compensate  our 
chief  executive  for  the  care  he  has  given  it  and  the  task 
he  has  performed. 

No  governor  within  my  knowledge, — and  the  com- 
parison is  not  invidious, — has  conducted  the  business  of 
this  state  with  greater  economy,  efficiency  and  success, 
or  with  a  more  faithful  and  patriotic  devotion  to  his 
duty  and  her  interests,  than  his  Excellency,  Governor 
Felker. 


HONORABLE  SAMUEL  D.   FELKER 
Governor 


21 


GOVERNOR   FELKER'S  ADDRESS. 

TV/fR.  CHAIRMAN,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen: 
•*•  •*•  Mr.  Elaine  says  in  his  "Twenty  Years  of  Con- 
gress," "for  forty  years  previous  to  the  war,  the  North 
and  South  were  growing  apart,  with  different  aims,  with 
different  interests,  and  looking  toward  different  destina- 
tions." This  was  largely  due  to  that  section  of  the  Con- 
stitution which  provides  that  "no  person  held  to  service 
or  labor  in  one  state  under  the  laws  thereof,  escaping  into 
another,  shall  in  consequence  of  any  law  or  provision 
thereof,  be  discharged  from  such  service  or  labor,  but 
shall  be  delivered  up  on  claim  of  the  party  to  whom  such 
service  or  labor  may  be  due." 

The  framers  of  the  Constitution  were  sorely  tried,  with 
reference  to  the  question  of  slavery,  and  were  naturally 
opposed  to  it,  but  in  order  to  have  the  Constitution 
adopted  by  the  states  of  the  Union  they  were  obliged  to 
acquiesce  in  the  above  section. 

The  great  leaders  before  the  Civil  War  looked  upon  the 
Federal  Constitution  as  a  series  of  compromises  among 
conflicting  interests,  and  they  really  believed  the  Union 
at  times  to  be  in  danger,  and  always  met  it  by  a  spirit 
of  compromise,  especially  with  reference  to  slavery,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  Missouri  compromise  of  1820,  when  the 
Louisiana  purchase  became  available  for  states ;  and  that 
of  1850  when  the  war  with  Mexico  had  given  us  a  large 
amount  of  territory. 

"Our  whole  history,"  said  Rufus  Choate  in  1841,  "is 
but  a  history  of  compromises."  But  as  the  country 
gradually  became  a  nation,  and  ceased  to  be  a  confed- 
eracy, it  could  not  be  a  nation  of  freemen  and  a  nation  of 
slaves,  half  free  and  half  slave. 

The  South  reasoned  that  if  slavery  was  excluded  from 
the  territories  they  themselves  were  virtually  excluded 


22 

from  living  in  any  of  them  with  their  families  as  then 
constituted.  That  there  was  danger  to  the  Union  the 
Civil  War  sufficiently  proved.  When  it  did  occur,  the 
North  had  increased  in  population  much  more  than 
the  South,  its  means  of  transportation  greatly  increased, 
and  four  states  of  the  South  remained  with  the  North, — 
and  still  such  was  the  belief  of  the  South  in  their  right 
to  withdraw  from  the  Union  and  their  determination  to 
do  so  that  it  took  one  of  the  greatest  wars  of  modern 
times  to  prevent  such  withdrawal. 

With  the  abolishment  of  the  Missouri  compromise,  the 
pent  up  forces  of  the  North  which  had  been  gathering 
from  the  beginning  were  set  free.  On  the  Fourth  of 
July,  1854,  Garrison  burned  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  saying  that  "the  Union  must  be  dis- 
solved." "We  confess,"  said  Wendell  Phillips,  "that 
we  intend  to  trample  under  foot  the  Constitution  of  this 
country."  "Slavery  is  a  covenant  with  hell,"  "the  flag 
is  a  flaunting  lie,"  were  other  expressions  of  the  period. 
Even  Wendell  Phillips,  the  orator  of  the  abolitionists, 
described  Lincoln  after  his  election  to  the  Presidency  as 
"the  slave  hound  of  Illinois." 

That  there  is,  indeed,  a  higher  law  than  mere  statute 
law;  a  higher  law  than  any  decision  of  the  court;  a  higher 
law  than  any  written  constitution,  has  not  always  been 
recognized.  That  law  is  the  law  of  public  opinion, 
especially  strong  when  the  demand  is  backed  up  by  the 
universal  conscience  of  mankind.  And  that  higher  law 
of  public  opinion  eventually  overthrew  constitutional 
provisions,  and  led  to  the  Civil  War,  and  to  a  practical 
revolution  in  the  thought  which  had  been  dominant 
from  the  beginning  of  our  government. 

The  compromise  measure  of  1850  was  adopted  by  the 
platforms  of  both  the  Democratic  and  Whig  parties  in 
the  year  1852. 


23 

When  the  Democratic  convention  met  in  June,  1852, 
the  leading  candidates  for  the  nomination  were  James 
Buchanan,  Stephen  A.  Douglas,  Lewis  Cass,  and  William 
L.  Marcy,  all  men  of  national  reputation,  but  no  one  of 
them  was  able  to  secure  enough  votes  to  obtain  the  nom- 
ination, and  on  the  forty-ninth  ballot  General  Pierce  of 
New  Hampshire,  who  had  not  been  a  candidate,  was 
nominated.  He  was  a  man  of  rugged  ancestry,  the  son 
of  General  Benjamin  Pierce,  who,  at  the  age  of  seventeen 
left  the  plow  to  enlist  in  the  army  of  the  Revolution  in 
1775  and  who  stayed  in  that  war  until  its  finish  in  1783 
— eight  years;  who  was  afterward  connected  with  the 
militia  of  New  Hampshire  until  he  was  raised  to  the  com- 
mand of  the  same;  ten  times  elected  councilor  of  the 
state;  three  times  high  sheriff,  and  twice  governor  of  the 
state;  a  leader  of  thought  and  of  men,  who  had  taken 
up  his  abode  in  the  town  of  Hillsborough,  and  from 
poverty  had  risen  to  the  rank  of  the  most  independent 
and  intelligent  farmers  in  that  town.  General  Ben- 
jamin Pierce  died  in  1839,  having  participated  in  the 
war  of  the  Revolution,  and  having  entered  into  and 
been  a  leader  in  connection  with  the  adoption  of  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States.  Of  such  a  father  was 
Franklin  Pierce,  born  on  November  23,  1804.  Oft  and 
repeatedly  he  had  been  told  of  the  deprivations  of  the 
Revolution,  and  of  the  baptism  of  fire  and  blood,  and 
learned  at  his  father's  knee  patriotism  and  a  love  of  the 
government  under  which  he  lived.  His  father  had  in- 
tense political  convictions  and  was  a  follower  of  Jefferson 
and  Jackson. 

After  finishing  his  course  at  Bowdoin  College,  in  1824, 
he  read  law  with  Judge  Levi  Woodbury  of  Portsmouth, 
and  Judge  Edmund  Parker  of  Amherst,  and  was  admitted 
to  the  bar  in  1827  and  commenced  practice  in  his  native 
town.  His  first  case  was  somewhat  of  a  failure  and  to  a 


24 

friend  he  said:  "I  will  try  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine 
cases  if  clients  will  continue  to  trust  me,  and  if  I  fail  as  I 
have  to-day,  I  will  try  the  thousandth.  I  shall  live  to 
argue  cases  in  this  court  room  in  a  manner  which  will 
mortify  neither  myself  nor  my  friends,"  which  certainly 
proved  true,  for  he  was  considered  one  of  the  best  jury 
lawyers  of  the  state. 

At  the  age  of  twenty-five  he  was  elected  to  the  New 
Hampshire  legislature  and  was  three  times  re-elected, 
serving  the  last  two  terms  as  speaker.  In  1833  he  was 
elected  to  the  lower  house  of  Congress  where  he  remained 
four  years,  and  then  entered  the  United  States  Senate, 
the  youngest  member  of  that  body.  He  was  there  asso- 
ciated with  Webster,  Calhoun  and  Clay,  and  other  great 
leaders  of  the  times. 

In  1842  he  resigned  his  seat  in  the  Senate  and  returned 
to  the  practice  of  law  in  Concord,  New  Hampshire.  In 
1845  he  was  tendered  the  appointment  as  United  States 
Senator  but  declined;  he  also  declined  the  nomination  for 
governor,  and  in  1845  President  Polk  offered  him  the 
United  States  attorney-generalship,  which  he  also  de- 
clined. He  was  certainly  not  an  office  seeker,  and  few 
men,  in  the  prime  of  their  lives,  would  have  given  up 
a  seat  in  the  United  States  Senate  for  the  practice  of  law. 

When  the  war  broke  out  with  Mexico  he  enlisted  as  a 
private  in  a  volunteer  company  at  Concord,  and  was 
soon  appointed  colonel  of  the  Ninth  regiment  of  infantry. 
In  March,  1847,  President  Polk  appointed  him  brigadier- 
general  in  the  volunteer  army  and  in  the  same  month  he 
set  sail  for  Vera  Cruz,  and  was  with  General  Scott  when 
he  entered  the  City  of  Mexico,  and  was  one  of  the 
commission  to  agree  on  an  armistice.  On  the  return  of 
peace  in  December  of  the  same  year  he  returned  to 
Concord  and  once  again  entered  into  the  practice  of  his 
profession. 


25 

In  1850  he  was  president  of  the  Constitutional  Con- 
vention, and  made  a  strenuous  and  successful  effort  to 
eliminate  the  religious  test  from  the  state  constitution. 

In  the  campaign  which  followed  General  Pierce's 
nomination  as  President  he  was  triumphantly  elected 
over  General  Scott,  the  Whig  candidate,  receiving  two 
hundred  fifty-four  electoral  votes  to  his  opponent's 
forty-two.  He  was  then  forty-seven  years  of  age.  His  ^ 
personal  appearance  was  dignified,  if  not  imposing,  al- 
though he  was  but  five  feet  and  nine  inches  in  height, 
slenderly  built,  without  that  depth  of  chest  or  breadth 
of  shoulders  which  indicates  a  vigorous  constitution;  his 
complexion  was  pale,  and  his  features  were  thin  and  care- 
worn, yet  his  deportment  was  graceful  and  authoritative; 
he  was  capable  of  enduring  great  physical  fatigue. 

His  inaugural  was  a  plain,  straightforward  document,      ^ 
national   in   tone,  and   stirred   the  hearts  of   the  vast 
audience  which   heard   it,   like   the  clarion   notes  of  a 
trumpet. 

"It  is  my  judgment,"  said  Harry  Bingham,  "that  I  '</ 
have  never  known  a  more  clear  headed  man  than  Franklin 
Pierce,  or  one  who  surpassed  him  in  patriotic  devotion 
to  his  country  and  to  his  whole  country,  or  one  who  had 
stronger  convictions  of  the  paramount  value  of  the  Amer- 
ican Union,  and  that  to  maintain  it,  the  rights  of  all  sec- 
tions as  guaranteed  by  the  Constitution  must  be  re- 
spected. No  man  surpassed  him  in  qualities  of  the  heart, 
and  the  consequent  amicability  of  manner  and  general 
courtesy  with  which  he  always  met  his  fellow-citizens 
caused  him  to  be  universally  beloved  and  respected." 
No  one  President  ever  won  the  affections  of  the  people 
of  Washington  so  completely  as  did  General  Pierce. 
The  President's  fascinating  courtesy  and  kindness  were 
irresistible.  So  lasting  was  this  feeling  among  all  classes 
that  twenty  years  later,  our  Congressman,  Hon.  Hosea 


26 

W.  Parker,  says:  these  traits  were  often  spoken  of  at  the 
Capital. 

President  Pierce  appointed  one  of  the  strongest  cab- 
inets of  any  President  in  the  history  of  the  United  States, 
with  Marcy  of  New  York  as  secretary  of  state,  and  Caleb 
Cushing,  attorney-general,  and  one  which  remained  with 
him  to  the  end  of  his  term. 

He  entered  upon  his  term  of  office  with  the  firm  convic- 
tion that  the  compromises  of  the  Constitution  must  be 
fairly  met  in  order  to  maintain  and  preserve  the  Union,  and 
with  this  knowledge  the  country  elected  him  by  an  over- 
whelming majority.  Buchanan  said :  "  I  know  you  to  be  a 
States  Rights  Democrat  of  the  old  Jeffersonian  school." 

During  his  term  the  boundaries  of  the  United  States 
were  extended  by  treaty  with  Mexico  and  included  what 
is  now  a  part  of  New  Mexico  and  Arizona;  a  commercial 
treaty  was  made  with  Great  Britain,  the  fishery  rights 
settled,  Japan  was  opened  to  civilization  by  Commodore 
Perry,  the  United  States  Court  of  Claims  was  established, 
and  in  every  department  the  government  was  honestly 
and  efficiently  administered,  and  everyone  admits  that 
aside  from  the  slavery  question  President  Pierce  met  the 
expectations  of  the  country. 

"But  for  slavery,"  said  Senator  Bainbridge  Wadleigh, 
"and  the  questions  growing  out  of  it,  his  administration 
would  have  passed  into  history  as  one  of  the  most  suc- 
cessful in  our  national  life." 

John  Sherman,  who  was  a  member  of  the  House  of 
Representatives  in  President  Pierce's  administration, 
and  was  appointed  upon  a  committee  to  investigate 
affairs  in  Kansas,  in  his  biography  says:  "Political  oppo- 
nents were  enemies  at  that  time,  who  did  not  always  do 
each  other  justice";  that  since  that  time  he  had  changed 
his  opinions  of  many  of  the  prominent  men  of  that  day 
and  especially  of  President  Pierce.  "That  he  was  a  genial, 


27 

social  and  agreeable  companion  is  affirmed  by  all  who 
were  familiar  with  him.  That  his  opinions  were  honestly 
entertained  and  firmly  supported  is  shown  by  his  ad- 
herence to  them  without  a  change  or  shadow  of  turning. 
In  this  respect  he  compares  favorably  with  many  leading 
men  of  his  party.  He  had  been  a  general  of  distinction 
in  the  Mexican  War  and  a  member  of  both  the  Senate 
and  House  of  Representatives.  He  was  a  leading  lawyer 
in  his  state.  His  messages  to  Congress,  considered  from 
a  literary  view,  were  able  state  papers,  clearly  and 
strongly  expressed.  It  was  his  great  misfortune  to  have 
to  deal  with  a  controversy  that  he  did  not  commence 
but  he  did  not  shrink  from  the  responsibility." 

Mr.  Chairman  of  the  Pierce  Statue  Committee,  I 
accept  this  statue  from  your  hands,  erected  by  the  people 
of  the  state  of  New  Hampshire  to  one  of  its  most  dis- 
tinguished sons,  who  was  always  "a  gentleman  and  a 
man  of  courage,"  who  believed  that  constitutional  guar- 
anties should  be  lived  up  to,  and  to  whose  worth  the  state 
of  New  Hampshire  has  erected  this  statue,  and  of  whom 
in  1863  during  the  time  of  our  Civil  War  when  most 
men's  motives  were  impugned,  Hawthorne,  that  man  of 
such  fine  honor  that  he  called  forth  the  truest  attach- 
ments and  noblest  friendships,  said: 

"Only  this  let  me  say,  that  with  the  record  of  your  life  in 
my  memory  and  with  a  sense  of  your  character  in  my  deeper 
consciousness  as  among  the  few  things  that  time  has  left  as  it 
found  them,  I  need  no  assurance  that  you  continue  faithful 
to  that  grand  idea  of  an  irrevocable  nation  which  as  you  once 
told  me  was  the  earliest  that  your  brave  father  taught  you. 
For  other  men  there  may  be  a  choice  of  paths — for  you,  but 
one;  and  it  rests  among  my  certainties  that  no  man's  loyalty  is 
more  steadfast,  no  man's  hope  or  apprehensions  on  behalf  of 
our  national  existence  more  deeply  heartfelt  or  more  closely 
intertwined  with  his  possibilities  of  personal  happiness  than 
those  of  Franklin  Pierce." 


28 


MR.  CARR,  INTRODUCING  JUDGE  ALDRICH: 

His  own  people,  here  in  New  Hampshire,  perhaps  best 
knew  Franklin  Pierce,  not  as  a  general,  a  congressman, 
a  United  States  senator,  or  as  president  even,  but  in  the 
active  practice  of  his  profession  as  a  lawyer.  He 
knew  thousands  of  men  by  name,  and  charmed  all  by 
the  ease  and  democracy  of  his  manner  and  speech,  and 
his  large-heartedness.  In  this  field,  in  his  time,  as  a 
trial  lawyer,  he  was  supreme. 

It  is  fitting  and  gracious  that  an  eminent  judge  of 
the  United  States  Court,  a  lawyer  all  his  life,  should 
have  aided  much  with  counsel  and  advice  in  the  erec- 
tion of  this  statue  of  Franklin  Pierce. 

We  may  be  assured  that  he  will  hold  the  balance 
with  an  even  hand,  and  aim  to  make  his  estimate  as 
able,  fair  and  just,  as  are  his  own  decisions.  That  is 
what  Franklin  Pierce  would  ask. 

I  present  Hon.  Edgar  Aldrich. 


JUDGE  ALDRICH'S  ADDRESS. 

"T^RANKLIN  PIERCE  was  a  New  Hampshire  man, 
•*•  and  he  achieved  the  Presidency. 

While  official  responsibilities  came  to  him  early  in 
life,  it  soon  developed  that  there  was  in  his  nature  a  rare 
quality  which  made  him  shrink  from  them  rather  than 
seek  them. 

The  first  paragraph  of  his  inaugural  address  reflects 
the  charm  of  his  sentiment  in  respect  to  private  life  and 
official  station.  These  were  his  words: 

"It  is  a  relief  to  feel  that  no  heart  but  my  own  can  know 
the  personal  regret  and  bitter  sorrow  over  which  I  have  been 
borne  to  a  position  so  suitable  for  others  rather  than  desir- 
able for  myself." 


HONORABLE   EDGAR   ALDRICH 


29 

The  way  official  responsibility  came  to  him  and  the 
way  he  laid  it  aside,  to  the  end  that  he  might  pursue  the 
peaceful  callings  of  his  profession  in  his  beloved  state 
and  among  neighbors  whom  he  cherished,  abundantly 
demonstrate  that  he  valued  private  and  peaceful  pur- 
suits above  the  glory  of  official  position. 

Mr.  Elaine,  in  describing  Franklin  Pierce,  says  that  he 
presented  a  rare  combination  of  the  qualities  which 
attach  friends  and  win  popular  support;  that  he  was 
remarkably  attractive  in  personal  appearance,  prepos- 
sessing in  manner,  ready  and  even  eloquent  as  a  public 
speaker,  fluent  and  graceful  in  conversation,  and  when 
still  a  young  man  that  he  was  preferred  to  all  the  other 
prominent  statesmen  of  his  party  as  a  Presidential 
candidate. 

Franklin  Pierce  was  descended  from  a  patriotic  and 
worthy  ancestry,  an  ancestry  which  followed  the  lead  of 
Washington  and  sturdily  helped  in  the  work  which 
created  the  Union  and  established  the  greatest  among 
the  governments  of  the  world. 

Franklin  Pierce  was  the  product  of  New  Hampshire 
soil.  The  blood  which  gave  force  and  energy  to  his  chiv- 
alrous life  was  the  blood  of  New  Hampshire,  and  his 
qualities  were  such  that  they  attained  for  him  the  chief 
magistracy  of  the  nation,  and  it  is  highly  appropriate 
that  New  Hampshire  should  erect  a  suitable  memorial 
to  his  great  achievements  and  his  picturesque  life. 

Franklin  Pierce's  life  covered  prominent  relations 
with  the  state  government,  the  period  of  the  Mexican 
War,  the  period  of  the  great  and  much  discussed  com- 
promises, a  term  as  President  of  the  United  States,  the 
years  of  the  momentous  slavery  discussions,  the  days 
in  which  occurred  the  shock  of  arms  which  disturbed 
the  foundations  of  the  government  itself,  and  his 
status  in  history  is  such  as  not  only  to  justify  but  to 


30 

demand  permanent  and  suitable  recognition  by  his 
native  state. 

This  statue  is  not  erected  to  Franklin  Pierce  because 
all  agreed  in  the  political  views  which  he  held  upon  the 
great  questions  of  the  period  to  which  he  belonged. 
It  is  erected  to  the  memory  of  a  New  Hampshire  man  of 
high  and  notable  accomplishments.  Therefore  it  is  not 
necessary  to  indulge  in  arguments  in  respect  to  his 
attitude  toward  the  highly  irritating  public  questions  of 
his  time  other  than  to  say  that  it  must  be  conceded 
and  that  it  ought  to  be  conceded,  that  conditions  in  the 
years  preceding  the  Civil  War  were  such  that  patriotic 
men  might  honestly  differ  as  to  the  surest  way  to  save 
the  Union.  We  who  held  the  one  opinion  as  to  how  the 
Union  could  be  saved  and  slavery  abolished  yield  nothing 
in  patriotism  or  honor  by  conceding  this.  It  would  be 
uncandid  to  say  that  arguments  were  not  then  in  the 
balance,  or  that  forces  were  not  then  in  the  balance. 
The  sentiment  of  the  North  was  so  divided  that  even 
those  who  held  the  view  which  ultimately  triumphed 
through  force  of  arms  were  in  doubt  as  to  what  ought 
to  be  done,  and  as  to  what  could  be  done  to  save  the 
Union. 

Many  forms  of  compromise  and  concession  were  sug- 
gested. 

In  illustration  of  the  doubt  and  the  uncertainty  exist- 
ing in  that  period,  it  is  only  necessary  to  refer  to  the 
incident  of  the  Conciliatory  Committee  of  Thirty- 
three,  created  by  the  National  House  of  Representa- 
tives in  the  winter  of  1 860-61,  when  dark  clouds  were 
resting  heavily  upon  a  distracted  nation. 

In  extreme  anxiety  to  conciliate  the  South,  to  save 
the  Union  and  to  avoid  war,  Charles  Francis  Adams, 
of  Massachusetts,  proposed  that  the  Constitution  be  so 
amended  that  no  subsequent  amendment  "having  for 


its  object  any  interference  with  slavery  shall  originate 
with  any  state  that  does  not  recognize  that  relation 
within  its  own  limits,  or  shall  be  valid  without  the 
assent  of  every  one  of  the  states  composing  the 
Union." 

This  measure  was  more  extreme  and  far-reaching  than 
any  ever  suggested  by  a  southern  man,  and,  as  will 
readily  be  appreciated,  would  have  made  the  institu- 
tion of  slavery  constitutionally  perpetual.  This  com- 
mittee of  thirty-three  was  composed  of  prominent  men 
from  the  North  and  South,  and  Mr.  Adams'  proposition 
was  reported  by  a  large  majority,  only  two  joining  in  a 
minority  report  with  a  proposed  substitute.  It  is  said 
that  the  proposed  substitute  was  drawn  by  Daniel 
Clark,  then  a  senator  from  New  Hampshire.  The  house 
minority  report  was  signed  only  by  Cadwallader  C. 
Washburn  of  Wisconsin  and  Mason  W.  Tappan  of  New 
Hampshire.  Thus  we  see  how  dangerously  near  we 
came  in  that  day  of  emergency,  in  order  that  the  Union 
might  be  saved  and  war  averted,  to  a  unanimous  propo- 
sition which  would  have  perpetuated  slavery. 

When  reflecting  upon  results  which  might  have 
followed  a  unanimous  report,  it  is  well  for  us  to  note  that 
two  of  the  three  dissentients  were  New  Hampshire  men. 

When  the  measure  proposed  by  Mr.  Adams  came  up 
for  discussion  in  the  House  of  Congress,  Mr.  Corwin  of 
Ohio  moved  a  substitute,  which  changed  its  substance 
very  little,  and  this  measure,  which  was  numbered  the 
thirteenth  amendment  to  the  Federal  Constitution,  and 
one  which  Mr.  Elaine  declares  would  have  made  slavery 
perpetual  in  the  United  States,  so  far  as  any  influence  or 
power  of  the  National  Government  could  affect  it,  was 
adopted  by  a  vote  of  133  to  65.  Among  those  who 
supported  the  resolution  in  the  National  House,  as  one 
best  calculated  to  save  the  Union,  were  John  Sherman  of 


32 

Ohio,  Charles  Francis  Adams  of  Massachusetts,  Howard 
of  Michigan,  Windom  of  Minnesota,  and  Morehead  and 
McPherson  of  Pennsylvania.  The  proposition  was 
adopted  in  the  Senate  by  a  vote  of  24  to  12.  Among 
those  voting  in  the  affirmative  were  Anthony  of  Rhode 
Island,  Baker  of  Oregon,  Dixon  and  Foster  of  Connec- 
ticut, Grimes  and  Harlan  of  Iowa,  Morrill  of  Maine, 
and  Ten  Eyck  of  New  Jersey; — Seward  of  New  York, 
Fessenden  of  Maine,  and  Collamer  of  Vermont  not 
voting. 

Before  action  could  be  had  in  the  states,  develop- 
ments were  such  as  to  render  efforts  in  the  direction  of 
reconciliation  fruitless,  and  the  idea  of  a  vigorous  prose- 
cution of  a  war  for  the  preservation  of  the  Union  became 
dominant  and  controlling. 

This  historical  incident  is  not  referred  to  for  the  pur- 
pose of  commending,  or  excusing,  particular  men  or 
measures,  but  as  illustrating  the  thought,  now  univer- 
sally recognized,  that  the  questions  at  issue  in  the  United 
States,  preceding  the  Civil  War,  were  of  such  a  charac- 
ter that  men  of  strength  and  patriotism  might  honestly 
disagree. 

We  must  not  be  too  swift  in  becoming  the  dictators 
or  the  arbiters  of  the  thoughts  and  the  principles  of 
others.  We  ought  and  must  accord  to  them  the  right 
to  hold  their  own  responsibilities  and  to  be  the  keepers 
of  their  own  consciences  in  respect  to  their  duties  to  their 
country  and  to  their  God. 

It  is  not  a  law  of  human  nature  that  strong  men,  how- 
ever honest,  shall  always  agree  about  the  best  way  of 
establishing  and  maintaining  a  beneficent  and  lasting  gov- 
ernment. Indeed,  men  are  so  prone  to  disagreements 
that  even  the  fundamental  propositions  for  creating  this 
government  of  ours  were  only  saved  from  wreck  by  the 
weight  of  a  hair  thrown  into  the  Constitutional  Con- 


33 

vention  in  the  spirit  of  conciliation  and  delicate  diplo- 
macy. 

It  is  to  do  honor  to  a  New  Hampshire  man  that  we 
erect  this  statue.  While  we  of  the  one  way  of  thinking 
might  well  differ  with  some  of  the  leading  thoughts  and 
expressions  of  Franklin  Pierce,  during  the  crisis  which 
was  to  determine  whether  the  nation  should  longer  exist 
or  perish  from  the  earth,  we  do  not  doubt  his  patriotism 
or  his  loyalty,  and  we  question  not  the  honesty  of  his 
convictions. 

The  chief  consideration  which  led  me  to  take  part  in 
these  exercises  was  to  put  in  enduring  form  the  sturdy 
expressions  of  a  great  New  Hampshire  man,  who  served 
his  country  in  Congress  during  the  winters,  and  in  the 
field  as  a  general  during  the  summer  campaigns  of  the 
Civil  War.  I  refer  to  General  Gilman  Marston.  In  a 
conversation  while  walking  from  the  dedication  of  the 
Webster  statue  in  front  of  the  State  House,  he  abruptly 
stopped  near  the  very  spot  where  the  statue  stands  to- 
day unveiled  and  said  to  me,  "There  is  one  more  thing 
that  New  Hampshire  ought  to  do.  New  Hampshire  ought 
to  erect  a  statue  to  Franklin  Pierce,  her  only  President. 
It  should  not  be  done  by  private  contribution.  It  should 
be  done  under  state  authority.  I  knew  Franklin  Pierce 
well.  He  was  a  great  lawyer,  and  a  gentleman  of  rare 
accomplishments.  He  was  the  prince  of  good  fellowship 
and  a  man  of  undoubted  patriotism.  Beyond  all  ques- 
tion he  honestly  believed  that  the  Union  would  be  de- 
stroyed if  we  went  to  war  about  it;  and  I  believed  that 
it  would  be  destroyed  if  we  didn't  go  to  war  about  it. 
He  was  as  honest  and  sincere  in  his  convictions  as  I  was 
in  mine,  and  I  want  to  say  to  you,  right  here,  that  if  the 
South  had  had  a  little  more  money  and  a  few  more  men, 
Franklin  Pierce  would  have  been  right  and  I  should  have 
been  wrong." 


34 

In  that  crucial  period  when  men  differed,  Franklin 
Pierce  may  have  misjudged  as  to  the  surest  way  of  sav- 
ing the  Union,  but  it  must  be  true  that  Hawthorne,  who 
understood  the  depths  of  his  generous  and  graceful  man- 
hood better  perhaps  than  any  other,  in  explaining  to 
General  Pierce  the  conviction  which  led  him  to  dedicate 
the  "Old  Home"  notes  as  a  tender  and  lasting  monu- 
ment to  his  memory,  and  using  the  words  just  quoted 
by  His  Excellency,  Governor  Felker,  so  expressive  of 
confidence  and  affection,  touched  the  real  soul  of  the 
man  he  knew. 

The  idea  of  a  memorial  does  not  rest  upon  partisan 
grounds,  or  upon  partisan  accomplishments,  or,  indeed, 
upon  the  abstract  question  of  one's  being  always  exactly 
right  upon  all  of  the  questions  of  his  day.  England  puts 
into  her  library  of  the  House  of  Lords  a  bust  of  Crom- 
well, not  because  he  was  always  politically  right  accord- 
ing to  English  standards,  but  because  he  was  a  great 
Englishman  and  a  man  of  notable  achievements. 

It  is  not  appropriate  on  this  occasion  to  discuss  the 
great  question  as  to  which  was  the  best  way  to  save  the 
Union.  The  war  came.  It  involved  a  strife  among 
brothers  of  one  country,  and  we  must  at  this  late  day 
accord  to  each  and  all  the  honor  of  having  struggled  for 
what,  to  them,  seemed  to  be  the  right.  The  Union  was 
preserved;  national  authority  was  permanently  estab- 
lished ;  and  we  are  under  one  flag,  respected  at  home,  and 
everywhere  throughout  the  earth;  and  it  is  a  happy 
fruition  that  all,  now,  agree  that  the  preservation  of  the 
Union  was  necessary,  to  the  end  that  we  should  become 
a  great  nation,  and,  above  all,  that  it  was  best  for  the 
men  of  the  South,  as  well  as  for  the  men  of  the  North. 


35 


MR.  CARR,  INTRODUCING  EX-SENATOR  CHANDLER; 

Virile  from  crown  of  head  to  sole  of  foot;  virile  frorit 
birth  to  the  present  live  waking  moment,  the  next 
speaker,  as  you  will  all  agree,  is  in  spirit  and  fertility 
the  youngest  man  in  the  party.  Big  enough  correctly 
to  estimate  a  political  adversary,  large  hearted  enough 
ever  to  have  in  mind  the  Master's  mandate  as  to  his 
enemies  and  friends,  he  loves  us  all,  even  though  he 
sometimes  flays  us. 

In  season  and  out  of  season,  facing  the  anger  and  op- 
position and  criticism  of  his  political  associates,  he  long 
ago  determined  the  state  should  do  justice  to  the  mem- 
ory of  Franklin  Pierce. 

By  his  work  mainly  has  been  restored  the  birthplace 
of  Daniel  Webster.  His  persistence  has  largely  con- 
tributed to  the  memorial  we  finish  to-day.  And  these 
are  but  two  of  the  things,  perhaps  among  the  least  of 
his  accomplishments,  for  which  New  Hampshire^will 
honor  and  love  him. 

He  has  seen  more  and  will  tell  us  more  of  the  motives 
and  personality  of  President  Pierce  than  we  know. 

We  welcome  to-day,  this  distinguished  son  of  New 
Hampshire,  who  has  represented  her  ably  and  always 
actively  in  so  many  fields,  whose  ability  we  all  admire; 
whose  fame  is  nation  wide,  and  whose  patriotism  none 
may  question — 

The  Honorable  William  E.  Chandler. 


ADDRESS  BY  EX-SENATOR  CHANDLER. 

|T  WOULD  be  impossible  for  me  on  this  occasion — the 
•*•  dedication  of  a  statue  in  the  State  House  yard  at 
Concord  of  President  Franklin  Pierce — to  deal  critically 
with  his  character  and  career,  or  to  fail  to  speak  of  him 
in  words  of  deep  tenderness,  for  the  simple  reason  that 
to  me  as  a  boy  he  was  kind  and  helpful  and  drew  me  to 
his  heart  with  irresistible  affection.  He  was  a  friend  of 
my  father  and  during  the  presidential  campaign  of  1852 
when  I  was  seventeen  years  old,  he  came  to  my  bedside 
in  my  home  on  Centre  Street  in  Concord,  where  I  was 
sick  with  fever,  and  spoke  to  me  cheering  words.  I  was 
studying  law  with  John  H.  George  and  Sidney  Webster 
(George  &  Webster)  and  after  the  canvass  opened  we 
moved  over  to  the  law  office  of  General  Pierce  and  his 
partner  Josiah  Minot  where  I  worked  for  General  Pierce 
in  collecting  the  fees  to  which  he  was  entitled  alone  for 
cases  tried  by  him  outside  of  Merrimack  County  where 
Mr.  Minot  was  an  equal  partner  with  him.  I  took 
great  interest  in  this  collection.  His  fees  were  ordinarily 
from  five  dollars  to  ten  dollars  per  day  and  expenses  out- 
side of  Concord!  Prior  to  his  going  to  Washington  on 
March  4,  1853,  I  think  I  had  managed  to  collect  about 
five  hundred  dollars,  and  my  expenses  for  collection 
were  about  fifty  dollars.  There  was  one  charge  of 
five  hundred  dollars  which  I  became  exceedingly  desirous 
of  collecting  through  James  Bell  (later,  in  1855,  elected 
United  States  senator)  who  was  the  senior  counsel  for 
the  Winnipesaukee  Lake  Cotton  and  Woolen  Manu- 
facturing Company  in  a  flowage  case  which  had  been 
tried  for  several  weeks.  General  Pierce  gave  me  a  care- 
fully worded  letter  which  I  took  to  Mr.  Bell  but  came 
home  without  the  money!  The  claim  was,  I  believe, 


HONORABLE  WILLIAM   E.    CHANDLER 


37 

settled  with  some  deduction  before  the  President  went 
to  Washington. 

In  the  spring  of  1855  I  was  in  Washington  with  my 
friend  Isaac  Andrew  Hill,  and  Judge  Minot  took  us  to 
the  White  House  up  the  back  stairs  where  we  saw  the 
President  and  his  Secretary,  Mr.  Sidney  Webster,  and 
were  invited  to  tea,  on  which  occasion  there  were  present 
only  the  two  Concord  boys  and  an  old-fashioned  Western 
gentleman  of  dignity  and  politeness.  The  President 
goodnaturedly  reproached  Mr.  Hill  (whose  father,  Isaac 
Hill,  had  been  a  Jackson  democrat  and  a  United  States 
senator),  for  leaving  the  Democratic  party  and  becoming 
a  Know  Nothing  and  a  free  soiler;  but  he  did  not  com- 
plain of  me  for  being  a  Whig  boy  from  whom  he  could 
expect  nothing.  The  White  House  had  been  a  lonely 
home  by  reason  of  the  sudden  death  by  a  railroad 
accident  of  the  boy  son,  Benjamin  Pierce,  on  January  6, 
1853,  after  his  father's  election,  but  before  his  inaugura- 
tion. 

With  all  these  kindnesses  from  the  President  I  could 
never  have  failed  to  love  him  and  it  has  always  remained 
certain  that  the  boy  he  loved  and  helped  would 

Be  to  his  virtues  very  kind 
Be  to  his  faults  a  little  blind. 

So  as  time  passed  I  came  to  praise  him  for  his  goodness 
and  greatness. 

To  the  Grafton  and  Coos  Bar  Association,  at  Plymouth 
on  January  6,  1888,  I  said  of  him  from  personal  knowl- 
edge: 

AH  my  own  observation  of  this  brilliant  advocate  was 
while  I  was  a  law  student  under  seventeen  years  of  age;  but 
I  could  even  then  appreciate  the  fact  and  am  able  now  con- 
fidently to  say,  that  very  few  American  lawyers  have  equalled 
him  in  ingenuity,  tact,  grace,  eloquence  and  power  before  a 


462428 


38 

jury ;  nor  should  his  ability  and  success  as  a  jury  lawyer  obscure 
the  further  truth,  that,  while  not  a  learned  lawyer,  he  had  one 
of  the  clearest  of  legal  minds,  and  an  unsurpassed  faculty  of 
stating  and  arguing  legal  principles.  I  think  a  stronger  im- 
pression was  made  upon  my  youthful  mind  by  the  arguments 
which  I  heard  him  make  on  legal  questions,  than  by  his  conduct 
of  jury  cases.  As  a  many  sided  lawyer,  capable  of  conducting 
trials  of  all  kinds,  it  seems  to  me  that  he  stood  facile  princeps 
at  the  New  Hampshire  bar,  not  even  yielding  the  palm  to  the 
massive  and  erudite,  but  eccentric,  Ira  Perley. 

Further  I  said  on  that  occasion : 

The  fact  that  Franklin  Pierce  became  President  of  the 
United  States  should  lead  the  people  of  his  native  state, 
without  forgetting  his  mistakes,  and  without  distinction  of 
party,  to  do  to  him,  in  some  appropriate  method,  signal  honor. 
On  the  first  Wednesday  in  June,  1845,  Franklin  Pierce  and 
John  P.  Hale  held  that  memorable  debate  in  the  North 
Church  in  Concord,  which  was  the  actual  initiative  in  New 
Hampshire  of  the  great  political  anti-slavery  contest,  the 
basis  of  which  made  the  political  issues  of  the  state  and  the 
country  for  the 'forty  years  which  followed,  which  had  such 
a  controlling  influence  upon  the  personal  fortunes  of  both 
these  distinguished  and  eloquent  men,  and  which,  as  to 
some  of  its  incidents  and  outgrowths,  has  not  yet  come  to 
an  end. 

The  heroic  statue  of  "Daniel  Webster,  whom  New  Hamp- 
shire proudly  gave  to  be  the  great  forensic  defender  of  the 
Union  and  the  Constitution  and  who,  in  spite  of  his  political 
and  personal  shortcomings,  was  the  greatest  intellect  that 
America  has  yet  produced,  fitly  stands,  the  gift  of  a  liberal 
private  citizen,  in  front  of  the  capitol  at  Concord.  To  the 
right  and  to  the  left  of  this  massive  memorial  I  hope  to  live 
to  see  erected  similar  statues  of  Franklin  Pierce,  given  by  New 
Hampshire  to  be  president  of  our  republic,  and  John  P. 
Hale,  the  first  distinctive  anti-slavery  United  States  senator 
and  New  Hampshire's  noblest  champion  in  the  cause  of  human 
freedom. 


39 

At  an  Old  Home  Day  Celebration  in  Concord  on 
August  24,  1914,  I  also  publicly  recorded  my  opinion  of 
President  Pierce  and  my  belief  that  the  people  of  his 
native  state,  without  forgetting  his  mistakes  and  with- 
out distinction  of  party,  should  do  him  signal  honor  by 
erecting  his  statue  in  the  State  House  yard. 

The  statue  of  John  P.  Hale  having  been  placed  in  the 
State  House  yard  on  August  13,  1892,  once  more  I 
ventured  to  speak  in  favor  of  the  erection  of  a  statue  of 
President  Pierce,  at  a  Republican  State  Convention  of 
September  17,  1908.  I  introduced  and  urged  this 
resolution: 

Resolved,  That  the  Republican  State  Convention  desires 
that  the  next  legislature  provide  for  the  erection  in  the  State 
House  yard  at  Concord  of  a  statue  of  Franklin  Pierce,  a 
native  and  distinguished  citizen  of  New  Hampshire,  an  able 
lawyer,  an  eloquent  orator,  a  general  in  the  national  army,  a 
representative  in  congress,  a  United  States  senator  and  a 
President  of  the  United  States;  and  the  convention  expresses 
the  hope  that  this  movement  for  the  erection  of  such  a  me- 
morial statue  will  receive  the  approval  and  support  of  all  our 
citizens  without  regard  to  party  distinctions. 

Unwise  opposition  arose  and  the  report  says : 

Mr.  Chandler  obtained  the  floor  and  stated  that  he  would 
be  unwilling  to  have  the  resolution  passed  by  the  conven- 
tion unless  by  substantially  a  unanimous  vote  and  therefore 
that  he  withdrew  the  same. 

On  March  4,  1913 — Woodrow  Wilson's  day — I  made 
my  last  appeal  for  the  statue,  this  time  to  the  Democratic 
legislature  of  1913,  saying: 

If  the  Democrats  will  all  advocate  it,  enough  Republicans 
will  vote  for  it  to  make  its  erection  sure. 

All  opposition  from  Republicans  should  cease.     As  people 


40 

grow  old  they  need  not  change  their  opinions,  but  they  ought 
to  moderate  their  animosities  and  recognize  the  good  that  is 
in  all  men. 

General  Pierce  in  his  relations  with  those  he  loved  and 
those  who  loved  him  was  one  of  the  gentlest  and  most  joyous 
of  men ;  and  of  the  twelve  Presidents  whom  I  have  known  and 
talked  pleasantly  with  in  the  White  House  he  came  very  near 
to  being  the  most  gracious. 

Equally  with  Lewis  Cass  and  Daniel  Webster,  Franklin 
Pierce  is  entitled  to  have  harsh  judgments  of  anti-slavery  men 
moderated,  as  time  passes,  through  a  recognition  of  the  sin- 
cerity of  their  fears  of  a  dissolution  of  the  Union  in  connection 
with  controversies  concerning  slavery. 

The  strength  of  this  plea  in  their  behalf  has  been  felici- 
tously shown  by  Mr.  Elaine  and  distinctly  by  me  as  appears 
in  a  memorandum  published  by  me  in  1908.  I  earnestly 
hope  that  every  citizen  of  New  Hampshire  will  in  the  era 
of  the  present  day  given  his  voice  in  favor  of  a  statue,  erected 
by  the  state  of  New  Hampshire  and  not  by  any  individual, 
of  President  Franklin  Pierce. 

It  was  most  gratifying  to  me  and  creditable  to  the 
people  of  New  Hampshire  that  without  any  further  mani- 
festation of  party  animosity  the  legislature  on  May  13, 
1913,  passed  a  law  directing  the  Governor  and  Council  to 
erect  the  statue  and  making  an  appropriation  therefor; 
and  the  result  of  this  commendable  action  stands  before 
us  in  the  graceful  statue  of  Franklin  Pierce  to-day  un- 
veiled. We  are  now  here,  citizens  of  both  politics,  to 
give  to  the  President's  memory  the  praise  and  honor 
which  is  implied  in  the  existence  of  the  memorial. 

On  four  official  occasions  it  has  been  my  duty  to  deal 
with  the  questions  of  the  judgments  which  should  be 
dealt  out  to  what  were  called  the  pro-slavery  statesmen 
of  the  ante- war  period. 

The  first  was  on  the  reception  by  the  Congress  of  a 
statue  of  Lewis  Cass  from  the  state  of  Michigan  on 


February  18  and  21,  1889;  the  second  on  the  reception 
by  Congress  of  a  statue  of  Daniel  Webster  (with  one  of 
John  Stark)  from  the  state  of  New  Hampshire,  on 
December  20,  1894;  the  third  on  the  unveiling  of  a 
statue  of  Mr.  Webster  in  Washington  presented  to  the 
United  States  by  Stilson  Hutchins  on  January  18,  1900; 
and  the  fourth  on  the  celebration  of  the  restoration  of 
the  Birthplace  House  of  Mr.  Webster  at  Franklin,  New 
Hampshire,  on  August  28,  1913. 

It  will  be  an  honor  to  me  whenever  a  citizen  of  my 
native  state,  which  has  so  much  honored  me,  will  read 
the  words  of  praise  which  I  am  able  to  give  to  these 
distinguished  men  who  gave  renown  to  the  state  of  their 
nativity  down  to  and  including  the  last,  whose  statue  we 
now  unveil — too  long  delayed  in  its  erection. 

In  considering  the  question  there  is  no  wisdom  in 
ignoring  the  reasons  for  the  delay  which  has  taken  place. 
They  are  President  Pierce's  relations  to  the  subject  of 
slavery.  He  was  a  pro-slavery  president  and  therefore 
must  have  no  statue — it  is  said.  At  the  end  of  fifty 
years  after  slavery  has  been  blotted  out  of  existence  this 
reason  should  be  disregarded. 

The  same  objection  could  be  made  to  statues  of  two 
other  sons  of  New  Hampshire — Lewis  Cass  and  Daniel 
Webster;  yet  the  statue  of  Cass,  given  by  the  Republican 
state  of  Michigan  to  the  national  gallery,  was  received 
by  congress  with  eulogies  participated  in  by  the  New 
Hampshire  delegation,  and  the  statue  of  Webster  was 
gvien  by  New  Hampshire  to  that  gallery  with  appropriate 
ceremonies,  and  a  like  statue  of  Webster  was  given 
to  the  state  by  a  private  citizen,  was  received  by 
the  commonwealth  and  placed  conspicuously  in  the 
State  House  yard  and  now  stands  there  in  company  with 
the  statues  of  John  Stark  and  John  P.  Hale.  On  none 
of  these  occasions  was  there  any  attempt  to  avoid  con- 


42 

sideration  of  the  hostility  which  had  existed  against 
both  Cass  and  Webster;  both  had  been  denounced  with 
extreme  bitterness,  the  one  as  always  a  pro-slavery  man, 
the  other  as  having  wholly  forsaken  the  anti-slavery 
cause.  You  all  know  the  animosities  aroused  in  those 
days.  But  they  did  not  continue  to  prevail  against  Cass 
and  Webster.  They  ought  not  longer  to  prevail  against 
Pierce.  The  real  reason  why  we  should  not  at  this  late 
day  longer  refrain  from  erecting  statues  to  such  men  is 
that  their  hesitancy  to  make  efforts  for  the  abolition  of 
slavery,  their  willingness  to  make  compromises  in  behalf 
of  slavery,  arose  from  their  deep  devotion  to  the  union  of 
these  states  which  it  was  believed  would  be  endangered  if 
controversy  over  slavery  continued.  Bear  in  mind  that 
these  men  were  nearer  to  the  days  of  the  formation  of  the 
constitution  than  we  now  are  after  more  than  one  hun- 
dred years  of  national  life  have  passed,  and  the  Union 
has  been  cemented  and  strengthened  as  the  result  of 
bloody  war.  They  felt  during  the  first  half  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  that  the  Union,  although  a  very  sacred 
bond,  might  easily  be  broken  into  numerous  discordant 
single  states  if  the  love  of  the  Union  was  not  cherished 
in  the  hearts  of  all  men  and  sacrifices  made  for  its  preser- 
vation. Upon  this  point  Mr.  Blaine  shows  the  reasons 
why  the  utmost  allowance  should  be  made  for  these 
great  men  of  New  Hampshire  who  were  in  favor  of  yield- 
ing much  to  slavery  in  order  to  save  the  Union  and  who, 
although  they  were  mistaken  in  their  conclusions,  are 
still  entitled  to  be  remembered  and  honored  as  honest  and 
sincere  in  their  public  opinions  and  patriotic  in  their 
national  conduct. 

MR.  ELAINE'S  EXPLANATION  OF  MR.  WEBSTER'S  ACTION. 

Mr.  Blaine  in  his  "Twenty  Years  of  Congress"  (Vol.  I, 
page  93)  attributes  Mr.  Webster's  pro-slavery  action  to 
sincere  sentiments  of  patriotism.  He  says: 


43 

"He  belonged  with  those  who  could  remember  the  first 
president,  who  personally  knew  much  of  the  hardships  and 
sorrows  of  the  Revolutionary  period,  who  were  born  to  poverty 
and  reared  to  privation.  To  these  the  formation  of  the  federal 
government  had  come  as  a  gift  from  Heaven  and  they  had 
heard  from  the  lips  of  the  living  Washington  his  farewell 
words  that  '  the  Union  is  the  edifice  of  our  real  independence, 
the  support  of  our  tranquillity  at  home,  our  peace  abroad,  our 
prosperity,  our  safety  and  of  the  very  liberty  which  we  so 
highly  prize;  that  for  this  Union  we  should  cherish  a  cordial, 
habitual,  immovable  attachment,  and  should  discountenance 
whatever  may  suggest  even  a  suspicion  that  it  can  in  any  event 
be  abandoned.' 

"Mr.  Webster  had  in  his  own  lifetime  seen  the  thirteen  col- 
onies grow  to  thirty  powerful  states.  He  had  seen  three 
millions  of  people,  enfeebled  and  impoverished  by  a  long 
struggle,  increased  eightfold  in  number,  surrounded  by  all  the 
comforts,  charms  and  securities  of  life.  All  this  spoke  to  him 
of  the  Union  and  of  its  priceless  blessings.  He  now  heard  its 
advantages  discussed,  its  perpetuity  doubted,  its  existence 
threatened. 

"A  convention  of  slaveholding  states  had  been  called  to 
meet  at  Nashville  for  the  purpose  of  considering  the  possible 
separation  of  the  sections.  Mr.  Webster  felt  that  a  genera- 
tion had  been  born  who  were  undervaluing  their  inheritance 
and  who  might  by  temerity  destroy  it.  Under  motives 
imposed  by  these  surroundings,  he  spoke  for  the  preservation 
of  the  Union.  He  believed  it  to  be  seriously  endangered. 
His  apprehensions  were  ridiculed  by  many  who  ten  years  after 
Mr.  Webster  was  in  his  grave  saw  for  the  first  time  how  real 
and  how  terrible  were  the  perils  upon  which  those  apprehen- 
sions were  founded.  .  .  .  The  thoughtful  reconsideration 
of  his  severest  critics  must  allow  that  Mr.  Webster  saw  before 
him  a  divided  duty,  and  that  he  chose  the  part  which  in  his 
patriotic  judgment  was  demanded  by  the  supreme  danger 
of  the  hour." 

But  while  accepting  as  just,  and  reiterating  as  I  have 


44 

on  the  occasions  referred  to,  this  vindication  by  Mr.. 
Elaine  of  the  "Union  savers"  who  were  unkindly  re- 
proached in  their  day  of  debate,  it  is  necessary  for  me 
to  avow  that  it  is  easier  for  me  to  do  this  in  behalf  of  the 
advocates  of  the  compromise  measures  of  1850  than  in 
behalf  of  the  statesmen  who  four  years  later  devised  and 
carried  to  a  passage  through  Congress  the  repeal  of  the 
Missouri  Compromise. 

This  repeal  was  utterly  indefensible,  even  although 
sustained  by  the  unjust  and  unfortunate  Dred  Scott 
decision,  and  remains  a  wrongful  act  of  the  American 
Congress,  which  was  fraught  with  distressing  conse- 
quences. Yet,  even  here,  because  their  public  action 
was,  as  much  as  Mr.  Webster's,  based  upon  an  "honest 
motive"  Stephen  A.  Douglas  and  Franklin  Pierce  are  to 
be  acquitted  of  unforgivable  public  acts  and  are  to  be 
praised  and  honored  for  their  careers  as  a  whole  of  states- 
manship and  patriotism. 

Therefore,  now  so  it  is,  that  in  my  declining  years,  I 
find  myself  unable  to  harshly  criticize  and  condemn  any 
of  the  leaders  of  the  first  ninety  years  of  American  In- 
dependence, or  to  withhold  from  any  of  them,  by  reason 
of  such  faults  and  mistakes  as  may  be  developed  in 
any  career  of  prominence,  the  praises  that  are  due  to 
them  for  any  wise  and  noble  and  patriotic  deeds. 

Those  of  President  Pierce  were  narrated  down  to  1852 
by  his  Bowdoin  College  associate  and  constant  friend, 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  in  a  most  attractive  and  felicitous 
campaign  biography  in  that  year,  and  were  fully  re- 
corded in  1888  in  Appleton's  "Cyclopaedia  of  American 
Biography"  by  one  who  had  been  a  United  States  senator 
from  New  Hampshire — Bainbridge  Wadleigh,  a  Republi- 
can, in  a  fair  and  accurate  recital. 

Franklin  Pierce  was  a  scholar  of  superior  knowledge,  an 
orator  of  captivating  eloquence,  a  lawyer  of  acute  learn- 


45 

ing,  a  trial  advocate  of  unsurpassed  skill  and  force,  a 
brave  soldier  on  the  battlefield  of  his  country,  a  public 
official  of  ability  and  fidelity,  and  a  President  of  conscien- 
tiousness and  patriotism,  whose  statue  in  this  State 
House  yard  is  fittingly  the  companion  of  that  of  the 
soldier  John  Stark  and  of  those  of  the  statesmen  Daniel 
Webster  and  John  P.  Hale.  Before  future  generations 
there  will  continue  to  stand  here  this  testimonial  to 
President  Pierce  from  all  the  people  of  his  state  asserting 
his  high  character,  his  splendid  achievements  and  the 
noble  traits  which  made  him  admired  and  beloved  by  his 
countrymen. 


MR.  CARR,  INTRODUCING  MR.  BRANCH  : 

Since  the  formation  of  our  government,  American 
democracy  has  been  on  trial.  It  is  to-day.  "The  basis 
of  a  true  democracy  is  moral  sovereignty."  Experience 
and  the  beacon  lights  of  history  guide  us  dimly  in  our 
struggle,  and  patriotism  and  righteousness  alone  can 
guard  our  way. 

Some  phases  of  the  part  played  in  the  struggle  by  him 
whom  we  honor  on  this  occasion  will  be  estimated  by 
one  of  our  best  students  of  history,  a  scholar,  lawyer, 
and  a  lover  of  true  American  democracy,  Honorable 
Oliver  E.  Branch,  who  will  address  us  on  Franklin 
Pierce  and  the  War  for  the  Union. 


46 


ORATION  OF  MR.  BRANCH. 

X/'OUR  Excellency,  Mr.  President,  Ladies  and  Gentle- 
•••      men: 

At  the  last  session  of  the  legislature  the  following 
joint  resolution  was  adopted: 

Resolved,  by  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representives  in 
General  Court  convened:  That  the  governor  and  council 
are  hereby  directed  to  cause  a  statue  to  Franklin  Pierce  to 
be  erected  in  an  appropriate  place,  to  be  by  them  selected 
in  the  state  house  yard,  the  material,  design,  workmanship 
and  dedication  to  be  left  to  the  governor  and  council,  and 
that  to  meet  the  expense  thereof  the  governor  be  authorized 
to  draw  his  warrant  upon  the  treasury  for  a  sum  not  exceed- 
ing $15,000. 

The  passage  of  this  resolution  was  the  gratifying  cul- 
mination of  an  effort  extending  over  several  years  on  the 
part  of  a  large  number  of  our  citizens  without  distinction 
of  political  parties,  to  obtain  for  Mr.  Pierce  permanent 
public  recognition  of  his  distinguished  services,  character 
and  career.  In  the  performance  of  the  duty  thus  imposed 
upon  the  governor  and  council  they  have  been  aided  by 
the  advice  and  practical  suggestions  of  several  gentle- 
men, some  of  whom  were  personally  acquainted  with  Mr. 
Pierce,  and  who,  notwithstanding  the  fierce  criticism  to 
which  he  was  subjected  in  his  long  public  life  for  his  atti- 
tude on  the  problems  connected  with  the  anti-slavery 
agitation  and  the  war  for  the  Union,  believe  in  the  hon- 
esty of  his  convictions,  his  patriotism,  and  his  loyalty 
to  his  country. 

Not  long  ago  the  commons  of  England  caused  to  be 
erected  outside  the  walls  and  within  the  yard  of  West- 
minster Hall  an  heroic  statue  of  Oliver  Cromwell,  and 
this  notwithstanding  Cromwell  is  still  regarded  by  many 


47 

English  people  with  absolute  aversion  and  as  a  veritable 
"man  of  sin."  Nevertheless,  the  people  of  England  were 
broad-minded  enough  to  recognize  the  great  services 
Cromwell  rendered  the  cause  of  constitutional  govern- 
ment, and  the  high  place  he  merits  in  the  pantheon  of 
English  history;  and  there  his  statue  stands  within  sight 
of  Temple  Bar,  where  for  years  after  the  restoration  his 
body  hung  in  chains,  a  monument  to  his  extraordinary 
career  and  a  witness  to  the  fine  tolerance  of  the  English 
people.  So,  too,  this  monument  which  the  people  of 
New  Hampshire  have  caused  to-day  to  be  erected  will 
stand  as  a  witness  to  their  liberal  spirit,  and  a  memorial 
to  the  high  accomplishments  of  Franklin  Pierce. 

Fifty-three  years  have  passed  since  the  events  occurred 
in  which  Mr.  Pierce  bore  a  conspicuous  part.  Thousands 
who  were  then  unborn,  now  are  voters.  The  restless 
boys  who  then  filled  the  benches  of  the  schoolhouses, 
who  were  stirred  with  a  strange  excitement  when  they 
heard  of  Sumter,  and  saw  volunteers  marching  through 
quiet  towns  and  villages,  thronging  the  railway  stations 
and  departing  amid  shouts  and  cheers  and  tearful  good- 
byes for  the  camp  and  field,  to-day  are  men  "on  whose 
faces  shines  the  light  of  life's  declining  sun."  The  long 
line  of  illustrious  men  who,  in  the  cabinet  and  legislature, 
in  army  and  navy,  conducted  the  nation  through  the 
struggle  have  to  a  large  extent  "gone  over  to  the 
majority,"  and  the  broken  regiments  of  scarred  vet- 
erans who  came  home  with  torn  and  tattered  battle 
flags  have  become  decimated  in  the  conflict  that  sounds 
no  truce. 

Thronging  through  the  cloud-rift,  whose  are  they,  the  faces 
Faint  revealed  yet  sure  divined,  the  famous  ones  of  old? 

"What" — they  smile — "our  names,  our  deeds  so  soon  erases 
Time  upon  his  tablet  where  Life's  glory  lies  enrolled? 


48 

"Was  it  for  mere  fool's-play,  make-believe  and  mumming, 
So  we  battled  it  like  men,  not  boylike  sulked  and  whined? 

Each  of  us  heard  clang  God's  'Come!'  and  each  was  coming; 
Soldiers  all,  to  forward-face,  not  sneaks  to  lag  behind!" 

Since  then  we  have  become  substantially  a  new  people 
with  a  better  understanding  of  the  causes  of  the  war  and 
of  the  events  that  led  up  to  the  great  rebellion  than  many 
who  witnessed  its  dramatic  beginning.  How  strange  it 
seems  to  us  that  human  slavery  once  existed  as  a  recog- 
nized protected  institution  in  a  large  portion  of  this  land ! 
It  is  as  unreal  to  us  as  the  fact  that  King  George's  statue 
once  stood  in  Bowling  Green,  and  that  royal  governors 
from  England  ruled  over  what  now  are  sovereign  states. 
How  like  a  dream  it  seems  to  those  now  in  the  decline  of 
life  that  for  four  weary  years  the  resources  and  the 
energies  of  the  two  great  sections  of  the  country  were 
marshalled  in  a  desperate  struggle  for  supremacy! 

Now  the  war  was  not  a  conflict  that  was  desired  or 
even  encouraged,  at  the  outset,  by  the  masses,  North  or 
South.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  the  party  leaders  at 
that  time  really  anticipated  that  a  great  civil  war  would 
be  the  final  result  of  the  mighty  political  struggle  which 
had  been  going  on  for  more  than  half  a  century.  The 
people  were  happy,  united  by  sympathy  and  community 
interest,  national  pride  and  national  glory.  There  was 
no  general  prevailing  sentiment  that  slavery  was  inher- 
ently wrong  and  should  be  destroyed,  for  it  was  an 
institution  that  the  fathers  found  here,  that  had  existed 
before  the  foundations  of  the  government  were  laid, 
which  was  protected  by  the  Federal  Constitution  and 
the  decisions  of  the  supreme  court,  an  institution  which 
had  flourished  in  Massachusetts  as  well  as  in  Virginia, 
and  which  had  died  out  of  the  northern  states  through 
economic  rather  than  humane  causes.  To  the  southern 
people  born,  reared  and  educated  under  its  shadow,  it 


HONORABLE  OLIVER  E.   BRANCH 
Orator  of  the  Day 


49 

appeared  not  only  right  but  natural  and  necessary,  and 
absolutely  indispensable  to  their  industrial  and  com- 
mercial existence,  while  New  England  believed  that  her 
primacy  in  cotton  manufactures  would  be  destroyed 
without  slave  labor  in  the  cotton  fields  of  the  South. 

When  the  Federal  Constitution  was  framed  and 
adopted,  slavery  was  of  necessity  recognized  as  an 
ineluctable  part  of  the  social  and  political  system,  which 
must  be  so  regarded,  and  consequently  allowed  and  pro- 
tected. The  Federal  Union  could  not  be  created  without 
the  concurrence  of  the  southern  states,  nor  the  Federal 
Constitution  adopted  without  their  votes,  and  to  have 
proposed  and  insisted  at  that  critical  time,  even  had  there 
been  any  great  sentiment  in  favor  of  it,  that  slavery 
could  be  abolished,  would  have  been  equivalent  to  saying 
that  there  should  be  no  Federal  Union  and  Constitution. 

And  so,  upon  the  quicksands  of  slavery  was  built  the 
majestic  temple  of  liberty.  Such  a  condition  of  things 
was,  of  course,  an  anomaly.  Here  was  a  people  that 
proposed  a  new  era  in  government.  They  announced  as 
the  foundation  principles  of  that  government,  the  largest 
freedom  to  all,  consistent  with  the  rights  of  all,  and  that 
"all  men  are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with  the  inalien- 
able rights  of  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness." 
And  yet,  that  people,  actuated  by  the  purest  motives  and 
the  highest  patriotism,  and  proclaiming  a  code  of  politi- 
cal principles,  as  luminous  as  a  star,  were  by  an  over- 
mastering necessity,  compelled  at  the  very  outset  of  their 
career,  to  violate  and  affront  those  principles  when  put 
into  practical  operation,  by  preserving  and  fostering 
under  their  organic  law  an  institution  as  dark  as  "  Erebus 
and  Old  Night."  Could  such  a  condition  of  things  long 
endure?  Could  abstract  right  and  active  wrong  be  made 
to  work  in  harmony?  Such  a  thing  was  opposed  to  the 
very  spirit  and  genius  of  the  government,  to  natural 


50 

justice  and  to  the  eternal  decrees  of  God.  It  bore  the 
seeds  of  its  own  destruction  within  itself.  "The  irre- 
pressible conflict"  could  not  be  postponed,  and  it  came. 

There  was  one  capital  defect  in  the  Federal  Constitu- 
tion. It  left  the  question  in  dispute  whether  the  states 
constituted  a  nation,  an  indissoluble  union  of  indestruct- 
ible states,  or  a  mere  confederation  of  absolutely  inde- 
pendent states,  which  had  reserved  to  themselves  the 
same  choice  and  power  to  withdraw  from  the  Union  when 
in  their  judgment  they  saw  fit,  as  they  had  to  join  it  in 
the  beginning.  The  former  is  the  true  theory,  said  the 
North ;  the  latter  is  the  true  theory,  said  the  South.  Nor 
was  the  South  alone  in  her  interpretation  of  the  nature  of 
the  Union.  It  prevailed  to  a  large  extent  in  the  North 
among  Democrats,  Whigs,  Republicans  and  Abolitionists. 
It  was  a  question  of  constitutional  law  which  neither 
Webster  nor  Calhoun  could  decide,  but  so  long  as  an  hon- 
est difference  of  opinion  was  possible,  so  long  the  stabil- 
ity of  the  government  and  the  permanence  of  the  Union 
were  imperiled. 

The  immediate  cause  of  the  war  was  the  result  of  these 
opposing  theories  respecting  the  structure  of  the  Union, 
which  on  the  part  of  the  South  had  been  forced  into 
growing  importance  by  the  anti-slavery  agitation  and 
the  increasing  conviction  in  the  minds  of  conservative 
men  of  all  parties  that  slavery  should  be  confined  to  the 
states  in  which  it  then  existed.  Its  subsequent  cause 
was  the  necessity  which  compelled  the  government  as  a 
war  measure  to  strike  at  the  institution  of  slavery  and 
through  its  destruction  at  the  rebellion  itself. 

It  is  not  always  considered,  in  the  discussion  of  the 
issues  that  agitated  the  country  during  the  presidency 
of  Mr.  Pierce  and  Mr.  Buchanan,  that  for  the  most  part 
they  involved  great  questions  of  law  upon  which  the 
ablest  lawyers  of  the  country  might,  and  did  honestly 


51 

differ,  but  which,  as  the  struggle  progressed  and  civil  war 
became  imminent,  following  the  election  of  Abraham 
Lincoln  to  the  Presidency,  forced  to  the  front  the  ques- 
tion of  the  destruction  of  slavery. 

Naturally,  Mr.  Pierce's  point  of  view  in  regard  to  these 
great  questions  was  that  of  the  trained  constitutional 
lawyer,  who  believed  that  the  safety  and  perpetuity  of 
the  Union  absolutely  depended  upon  a  strict  adherence 
to  the  Federal  Constitution,  and  the  decisions  of  the 
supreme  court  in  cases  where  those  laws  were  involved, 
and  that  if  the  restraints  of  the  Constitution  and  of  the 
courts  upon  the  powers  of  Congress  were  destroyed,  the 
destruction  of  the  Union  would  be  the  unescapable  con- 
sequence and  result. 

It  was,  therefore,  inevitable  that  in  the  midst  of  the 
passions  excited  by  the  progress  of  the  war,  and  espe- 
cially by  the  issuance  of  the  emancipation  proclamation, 
Mr.  Pierce's  loyalty  to  the  Union  was  seriously  ques- 
tioned, but  I  think  it  is  beyond  doubt  that  during  this 
period  he  was  sincerely  concerned  over  the  threatened 
dismemberment  of  the  Union,  and  felt  that  in  comparison 
with  this  menace  the  question  of  the  destruction  or  the 
continuance  of  slavery  was  of  secondary  concern;  and 
thus  it  was  that  when  the  slavery  question  had  come  to 
be  a  moral  issue  and  its  destruction  urged  as  a  legitimate 
exercise  of  the  war  powers  of  the  government  that  Mr. 
Pierce's  position  upon  these  matters  was  bitterly  attacked 
and  condemned  in  the  North,  especially  in  New  Hamp- 
shire, and  his  loyalty  to  the  Union  openly  challenged. 

There  is  another  fact  that  is  often  lost  sight  of  in  con- 
sidering the  causes  that  led  to  the  great  rebellion,  and 
to  the  position  which  Mr.  Pierce  took  in  regard  to  them, 
and  that  is,  that  the  Republican  party  came  into  power, 
not  upon  the  issue  of  abolishing  slavery,  but  instead, 
upon  the  issue  of  confining  it  to  the  states  where  it  then 


52 

existed;  and  that  the  war  was  not  undertaken  by  the 
government  for  the  purpose  of  destroying  slavery,  but 
for  the  purpose  of  putting  down  the  rebellion  and  pre- 
serving the  Union. 

In  his  first  inaugural  address,  Mr.  Lincoln  said: 

I  have  no  purpose  directly  or  indirectly  to  interfere  with  the 
institution  of  slavery  in  the  states  where  it  now  exists.  I 
believe  I  have  no  lawful  right  to  do  so,  and  I  have  no  inclina- 
tion to  do  so.  Those  who  nominated  me  and  elected  me  did 
so  with  the  full  knowledge  that  I  had  made  this  and  many 
similar  declarations  and  had  never  recanted  them. 

Again,  he  said  in  his  letter  to  Horace  Greeley,  in 
August,  1862,— 

I  would  save  the  Union.  I  would  save  it  in  the  shortest 
way  under  the  Constitution.  The  sooner  the  national  author- 
ity can  be  restored,  the  nearer  the  Union  will  be  "the  Union 
as  it  was."  If  there  be  those  who  would  not  save  the  Union 
unless  they  could  at  the  same  time  save  slavery,  I  do  not  agree 
with  them.  If  there  be  those  who  would  not  save  the  Union 
unless  they  could  at  the  same  time  destroy  slavery,  I  do  not 
agree  with  them.  My  paramount  object  in  this  struggle 
is  to  save  the  Union,  and  it  is  not  either  to  save  or 
to  destroy  slavery.  If  I  could  save  the  Union  without 
freeing  any  slave  I  would  do  it.  If  I  could  save  it  by 
freeing  all  the  slaves  I  would  do  it.  If  I  could  save  it  by 
freeing  some  and  leaving  others  alone,  I  would  also  do  that. 
What  I  do  about  slavery  and  the  colored  race  I  do  because 
I  believe  it  helps  to  save  the  Union.  What  I  forbear,  I  for- 
bear because  I  do  not  believe  it  would  help  to  save  the  Union. 
I  have  so  stated  my  purpose  according  to  my  view  of  official 
duty,  and  I  intend  no  modification  of  my  oft-expressed  per- 
sonal wish  that  all  men  everywhere  could  be  free. 

This  letter  of  Mr.  Lincoln  immediately  subjected 
him  to  a  storm  of  condemnation,  quite  as  violent  as 
those  to  which  Mr.  Pierce  had  been  subjected;  but  so 


53 

inflamed  had  public  sentiment  become  in  regard  to 
slavery  and  putting  down  the  rebellion,  that  all  appeals 
for  conservative  action  in  dealing  with  them  were  with 
many  regarded  as  little  short  of  disloyalty. 

I  think  it  is  beyond  question  that  before  Mr.  Lincoln 
assumed  the  duties  of  his  office  he  was  profoundly  appre- 
hensive that  the  secession  movement,  which  for  the  time 
seemed  to  have  lost  something  of  its  momentum,  fol- 
lowing the  action  of  the  seven  states  that  had  already 
passed  secession  ordinances,  would  be  followed  by  the 
secession  of  other  states  upon  the  turning  over  of  the 
government  to  the  victorious  Republican  party,  in  which 
event  nothing  but  war  could  stay  the  progress  of  the 
slave  states  in  setting  up  a  separate  government  in  which 
their  constitutional  rights  would  find  the  protection 
which,  it  was  insisted,  they  had  not  had  under  the 
Federal  Union,  and  the  way  opened  for  the  ultimate 
triumph  of  the  secession  cause.  Herein  we  may  find  an 
explanation  of  the  highly  conciliatory  tone  of  Mr.  Lin- 
coln's first  inaugural  address,  and  in  which  he  sought 
to  allay  the  fears  of  the  South  that  it  was  the  intention 
of  the  Republican  administration  to  interfere  with  slav- 
ery in  the  states  where  it  then  existed.  But  secession 
triumphant  meant  something  more  than  a  particular 
theory  of  the  Union  established;  it  meant  slavery  pre- 
served and  extended  by  the  power  of  a  new  empire  of 
which  it  should  be  the  cornerstone.  Nevertheless, 
when  the  guns  of  Fort  Moultrie  opened  on  the  "Star 
of  the  West,"  the  challenge  which  was  then  made  to  the 
government  and  which  the  government  accepted  was 
simply  whether  there  should  be  a  Union  or  a  Confed- 
eration, not  whether  there  should  be  a  Union  with  or 
without  slavery.  Well,  that  was  something  worth  fight- 
ing for,  yet  it  lacked  on  the  side  of  the  North,  to  some 
extent,  the  incentives  which  spring  from  a  sense  of 


54 

high  conviction,  which  inspire  popular  enthusiasm  and 
which,  when  they  once  seize  upon  a  great  people,  make 
their  armies  invincible  and  their  cause  triumphant. 
Small  wonder  that  between  1861  and  1863  patriotic 
men  often  said,  "Are  we  not  fighting  for  a  principle  which 
is  purely  academic?  It  is  not  after  all  simply  a  ques- 
tion of  constitutional  law,  which  the  greatest  lawyers 
of  the  country  cannot  decide,  and  which,  though  its 
solution  affects  the  form  of  our  government,  is  not  abso- 
lutely necessary  for  our  existence  or  our  happiness? 
Well  might  men  say,  as  they  often  did,  when  the  news 
of  defeat  and  loss  upon  loss  came  up  from  our  armies, 
"Are  we  not  paying  too  dearly  for  an  experiment  of 
government  by  the  people?  Is  not  the  prophecy  of 
Mr.  Lincoln  being  fulfilled  that  'should  we  go  to  war 
after  great  losses  on  both  sides  and  nothing  gained,  the 
same  questions  will  be  forced  upon  us?" 

It  was  not  until  the  Emancipation  Proclamation  was 
issued,  when  the  struggle  for  "the  Union  as  it  was"  and 
"the  Constitution  as  it  was,"  became  the  struggle  for 
"the  Constitution  as  it  is"  and  "the  Union  as  it  is," 
when  the  cause  became  one  not  of  politics  only,  but  of 
morals;  not  of  governmental  philosophy,  but  of  human- 
ity; not  of  theoretical  liberty,  but  of  practical  freedom; 
that  the  North  and  her  armies  caught  the  inspiration 
which  swept  them  straight  on  to  victory.  The  national 
conscience  which  had  been  paralyzed  for  a  hundred 
years  was  suddenly  quickened  into  life,  and  as  if  to 
atone  in  an  hour  for  the  sins  of  a  century,  the  power  of  the 
government  was  hurled  at  the  confederacy  with  the 
fury  of  retribution.  The  question  of  secession  and 
slavery  was  decided  beyond  appeal,  and  for  the  first 
time  in  its  history  the  nation  became  worthy  of  the 
exalted  position  it  had  so  long  and  so  falsely  assumed. 

Mr.    Pierce's    professional    and    political    career  was 


55 

coincident  with  the  most  critical  years  in  the  history 
of  the  republic;  years  when  the  very  life  of  the  nation 
was  at  stake,  when  the  threat  of  secession  was  heard  in 
the  North  as  well  as  in  the  South;  years  when  the 
institution  of  slavery  was  defended  in  many  a  northern 
pulpit  as  something  divinely  ordered;  years  when  the 
possibility  of  a  disruption  of  the  Federal  Union  was 
regarded  with  complacency  and  excited  no  general 
alarm,  and  when  great  issues  that  agitated  the  country 
involved  questions  of  organic  law  instead  of  morals  and 
the  sentiments  of  patriotism. 

The  situation  prior  to  the  actual  opening  of  hostilities 
was  most  extraordinary.  Truly,  it  was  a  time  "that 
tried  men's  souls."  Here  was  slavery  firmly  intrenched 
in  sixteen  states,  protected  and  buttressed  by  the  Fed- 
eral Constitution  and  the  Federal  statutes,  and  the 
decisions  of  the  supreme  court,  and  representing  mil- 
lions of  money  invested  in  slaves  and  threatening  seces- 
sion if  their  right  to  hold  slaves  was  assailed.  Here 
were  the  Abolitionists,  demanding  the  immediate  over- 
throw of  the  whole  slavery  system.  Here  were  the 
great  senators  of  the  North,  attacking  in  high  debate 
the  right  of  secession,  and  on  the  other  hand,  the  South- 
ern senators  passionately  defending  secession  and  pro- 
claiming the  absolute  right  of  states  to  order  and  direct 
their  own  domestic  affairs  without  interference  from 
the  general  government  or  the  free  states.  Here  was 
Mr.  Lincoln,  despairing  of  any  agreement  for  composing 
the  warring  parties,  proposing  that  slavery  should  be 
abolished  by  the  payment  of  four  billion  dollars  to  the 
slave  owners  to  compensate  them  for  the  deprivation  of 
their  property.  Here  was  the  Republican  party  pro- 
posing that  slavery  should  not  be  abolished  but  confined 
to  the  states  where  it  then  existed;  and  on  the  other  hand, 
here  were  the  Douglas  Democrats,  proposing  to  let 


56 

the  new  states  decide  for  themselves  whether  or  not  they 
would  permit  slavery.  No  wonder  that  the  lines  of  care 
deepened  on  the  sad  face  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  when  day  after 
day  the  possibility  of  saving  the  Union  grew  more  and 
more  hopeless.  Little  wonder  that  patriotic  men,  amidst 
these  warring  and  mutually  extinctive  factions  knew 
not  where  the  right  lay  nor  where  the  path  of  duty  led, 
and  that  they  sometimes  erred  in  judgment,  especially 
when  over  all  that  wide  welter  of  strife  there  hung  the 
portentous  clouds  of  civil  war. 

There  was  one  thing,  which  perhaps  more  than  any 
other  intensified  public  excitement  over  the  anti-slavery 
issue  and  the  secession  movement,  and  that  was  the 
decision  of  the  supreme  court  of  the  United  States  in  the 
Dred  Scott  case,  a  decision  which  was  long  misrepre- 
sented and  which  caused  the  chief  justice  and  the  justices 
who  concurred  with  him  in  the  opinion  to  be  unsparingly 
assailed  and  the  honesty  of  their  conclusions  denied  on 
hundreds  of  platforms  and  in  thousands  of  newspapers 
and  pamphlets  throughout  the  North.  The  specific 
charge  which  was  made  against  the  opinion,  and  which 
roused  the  bitterest  feeling,  was  that  it  decided  that  "a 
negro  has  no  rights  that  a  white  man  is  bound  to  respect. " 
That  this  was  an  absolute  perversion  of  what  the  court  in 
fact  decided  is  apparent  upon  the  briefest  examination, 
but  the  charge  was  made  so  persistently  and  so  often  that 
no  denial  of  its  truth  was  listened  to,  so  tense  had  public 
feeling  become  in  regard  to  slavery  in  the  southern  as 
well  as  in  the  northern  states. 

The  facts  in  brief  were  these:  One  of  the  important 
issues  raised  in  the  case  was  whether  negroes  were  "citi- 
zens" of  the  United  States  within  the  meaning  of  that 
term  as  used  in  the  Federal  Constitution,  and  it  was  held 
by  a  majority  of  the  court  that  they  were  not.  In 
support  of  this  conclusion,  Chief  Justice  Taney  went 


THE  STATUE 
(Another  View) 


57 

into  an  historical  account  of  the  condition  of  the  negro 
in  this  country  and  in  England  previous  to  the  adoption 
of  the  Constitution,  and  especially  as  to  the  light  in 
which  that  race  was  regarded  at  the  time  the  Constitu- 
tion was  framed.  In  the  course  of  his  remarks  he  said: 

It  is  difficult  at  this  day  to  realize  the  state  of  public  opinion 
in  relation  to  that  unfortunate  race  which  prevailed  in  the 
civilized  and  enlightened  portions  of  the  world  at  the  time  of 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and  when  the  Constitution 
was  framed  and  adopted,  but  the  history  of  every  European 
nation  displayed  it  in  a  manner  too  plain  to  be  mistaken.  They 
had  for  more  than  a  century  been  regarded  as  beings  of  an 
inferior  order  and  altogether  unfit  to  associate  with  the  white 
race,  either  in  social  or  political  relations,  and  so  far  inferior 
that  they  had  no  rights  which  the  white  man  was  bound  to 
respect;  and  that  the  negro  might  justly  and  lawfully  be  re- 
duced to  slavery  for  his  benefit.  .  .  .  And  in  no  nation 
was  this  opinion  more  firmly  fixed  or  uniformly  acted  upon 
than  by  the  English  government  and  the  English  people.  The 
opinion  thus  sustained  and  acted  upon  in  England  was  natu- 
rally impressed  upon  the  colonies  which  they  founded  on  this 
side  of  the  Atlantic,  and  accordingly,  a  negro  of  the  African 
race  was  regarded  by  them  as  an  article  of  property  and  held 
and  bought  and  sold  as  such  by  everyone  of  the  thirteen  colon- 
ies which  united  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and 
afterwards  formed  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 

It  will  be  seem,  then,  that  the  statement  to  which  we 
have  referred  was  only  that  of  an  historical  fact  made  by 
Judge  Taney  for  the  purpose  of  ascertaining  the  probable 
meaning  of  the  word  "citizen,"  as  used  in  the  Constitu- 
tion. He  did  not  make  it  as  a  judicial  decision,  nor 
state  it  as  an  axiom  of  morality  or  justice.  It  was  simply 
a  statement  of  an  historical  fact  relative  to  an  opinion 
formerly  held.  Still  less  did  he  affirm  that  such  was  his 
opinion,  for  in  speaking  of  certain  laws  made  in  view  of 
such  opinion,  he  said: 


58 

It  is  not  the  province  of  the  court  to  decide  upon  the  justice 
or  injustice,  policy  or  impolicy,  of  these  laws.  The  decision 
of  that  question  belongs  to  the  political  or  law-making  power, 
to  those  who  formed  the  sovereignty  and  framed  the  Con- 
stitution. The  duty  of  the  court  is  to  interpret  the  instrument 
they  have  framed  with  the  best  lights  we  can  obtain  upon  the 
subject,  and  to  administer  it  according  to  its  true  intent  and 
meaning  when  it  was  adopted. 

Mr.  Pierce  defended  the  decision  of  the  supreme  court 
in  this  case,  and  as  was  inevitable,  had  to  share  the  odium 
that  was  cast  upon  the  decision  long  after  it  had  become 
a  closed  chapter  in  the  constitutional  history  of  the 
nation.  I  venture,  however,  to  say  that  a  calm,  dis- 
passionate examination  of  the  opinion  of  Judge  Taney 
will  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  his  argument  was  not 
answered  by  Judge  Curtiss,  who  wrote  the  principal 
dissenting  opinion,  and  should  absolutely  refute  the 
charge  so  often  made  that  the  gentle,  high-minded, 
incorruptible,  accomplished  chief  justice  made  himself 
the  willing  agent  for  keeping  in  slavery  thousands  of  the 
human  race. 

The  fugitive  slave  law,  the  Kansas- Nebraska  bill, 
and  the  Missouri  Compromise  were  all  party  and  admin- 
istration measures  which  Mr.  Pierce  could  not  do  other- 
wise than  support,  and  which  were  designed  to  protect 
slavery  and  to  counteract  the  effects  which  were  being 
made  in  the  North  to  abolish  it.  But  so  long  as  slavery 
was  sanctioned  and  protected  by  the  Federal  Constitu- 
tion it  could  not  be  said  that  the  South  was  not  justified 
in  demanding  that  its  constitutional  right  to  hold  slaves 
should  not  be  questioned  or  attacked.  To  the  people 
of  this  day  it  seems  incredible  that  such  legislation 
could  have  been  enacted  or  defended.  It  is  only  in  the 
retrospect  of  fifty  years  and  by  putting  ourselves  in 
imagination  in  the  place  of  the  southern  people  that  we 
may  find  justification  for  the  motives  that  actuated  them, 


59 

and  for  the  sincerity  of  their  belief,  not  only  that  their 
cause  was  just,  but  that  secession  and  the  establishment 
of  a  separate  nation  were  the  only  alternative  remaining 
to  them  if  they  were  to  be  denied  or  deprived  of  their 
rights  under  the  Federal  compact. 

In  the  light  of  these  facts,  we  may  now  see  how  unjust 
were  the  assaults  which  at  the  time  were  made  upon  Mr. 
Pierce  because  he  differed  with  other  great  statesmen 
and  lawyers  upon  these  questions  of  constitutional  law, 
and  how  easy  it  was  to  blame  him  because  he  did  not  look 
upon  secession  and  slavery  as  they  are  now  looked  upon 
after  fifty  years  of  moral  progress  and  social  and  political 
reform.  He  should  be  judged  in  thelight  of  theconditions 
as  they  existed  in  his  time,  and  in  view  of  the  conflicting 
interests  that  were  struggling  for  the  mastery,  the  complex 
character  of  the  questions  of  law  that  entered  into  the 
controversy,  and  the  far-reaching  disastrous  consequences 
that  would  follow  the  destruction  of  the  Union. 

Time  has  softened  the  passions  that  were  aroused  by 
that  mighty  struggle  and  has  lifted  into  truer  perspective 
the  tremendous  issues  that  divided  the  country  and 
which  brought  the  Union  to  the  perilous  verge  of  de- 
struction, and  it  has  also  brought  into  clearer  light  Mr. 
Pierce's  integrity  of  purpose,  his  real  loyalty  to  the  coun- 
try which  had  so  greatly  honored  him,  at  the  time  when 
the  unsettled  problems  of  the  government  were  remorse- 
lessly dragging  the  nation  into  a  war,  the  consequences  of 
which  no  man  could  foresee.  But  may  we  not  now  see, 
that  although  Mr.  Pierce  may  have  made  serious  mis- 
takes, as  the  events  finally  showed,  in  the  position  which 
he  took  upon  the  momentous  questions  that  concerned  the 
nation  in  the  supreme  crisis  of  its  existence,  he  was  not  a 
traitor,  nor  an  ingrate,  nor  a  coward,  but  a  true  lover  of 
his  country,  and  a  statesman  in  whose  accomplishments 
his  native  state  may  take  a  just  and  lasting  pride. 


6o 


MR.  CARR,  INTRODUCING  MR.  WHITCHER: 

We  have,  as  our  last  speaker,  one  who  is  not  of  the 
political  faith  of  Franklin  Pierce  but  who  always,  in 
this  hall  and  elsewhere,  has  striven  to  obtain  this  statue 
to  New  Hampshire's  only  President.  We  are  glad  to 
welcome  him, — Honorable  William  F.  Whitcher. 


MR.  WHITCHER'S  ADDRESS. 

HPHE  memorial,  to-day  dedicated,  is  the  well-considered 
A  tribute  the  state  of  New  Hampshire  pays  to  the 
honorable  service,  the  lofty  achievements  and  the  de- 
voted patriotism  of  a  distinguished  son.  No  feature  of 
his  life  and  character  was  more  marked  and  prominent 
than  such  patriotism.  Patriotism  is  a  passion  for  country, 
and  Franklin  Pierce  loved  his  country  thus,  and  gave 
it  his  best  service.  He  came  of  sturdy  Revolutionary 
stock,  and  love  of  country,  and  devotion  to  its  interests 
were  his  by  inheritance.  This  love  and  devotion  grew 
with  his  growth  and  ripened  into  fullness  with  his  ripen- 
ing years. 

I  quote  two  characteristic  utterances  of  his,  made 
under  circumstances  which  preclude  all  doubt  of  their 
thorough  sincerity.  On  the  solemn  occasion  of  his  in- 
auguration as  President  of  the  United  States  he  said : 

With  the  Union  my  best  and  dearest  earthly  hopes  are 
entwined.  .  .  .  It's  with  me  an  earnest  and  vital  belief 
that  as  the  Union  has  been  the  source,  under  Providence,  of 
our  prosperity  to  this  time,  so  it  is  the  surest  pledge  of  a 
continuance  of  the  blessings  we  have  enjoyed,  and  which 
we  are  sacredly  bound  to  transmit  undiminished  to  our 
children. 

Ten  years  later  in  the  dark  days  of  Civil  War,  when 


WILLIAM   F.  WHITCHER 


6i 

the  fate  of  the  Union  yet  hung  in  the  balance,  in  an  ad- 
dress made  on  that  memorable  Fourth  of  July,  1863, 
near  where  his  statue  now  stands  he  said : 

I  will  not  believe  that  the  experiment  of  man's  capacity 
for  self-government,  which  was  so  successfully  illustrated 
until  all  the  Revolutionary  men  had  passed  to  their  final  re- 
ward, is  to  prove  a  humiliating  failure.  Whatever  others  may 
do,  we  will  never  abandon  the  hope  that  the  Union  is  to  be 
restored;  whatever  others  may  do,  we  will  cling  to  it  as  the 
mariner  clings  to  the  last  plank  when  night  and  tempest  close 
around  him. 

With  him  Country  and  Union  were  one.  The  Union 
he  ardently  loved  and  devotedly  served,  was  the  Union 
formed  by  the  Constitution,  a  Constitution  he  regarded 
with  reverence,  and  the  terms  of  which  he  believed  should 
be  strictly  construed.  It  was  a  Union  of  sovereign 
states.  The  Constitution  gave  certain  broad  and  general 
powers,  powers,  however,  clearly  denned,  to  a  Federal 
Government.  All  others,  he  firmly  believed,  were  re- 
tained by  the  states.  Thus  his  country's  welfare  de- 
pended upon  a  constant  discrimination  between  the  sepa- 
rate rights  and  responsibilities  of  the  states,  and  the 
common  rights  and  obligations  of  the  whole  people 
under  the  general  government.  In  a  word,  the  country 
he  loved  and  to  which  he  gave  his  life  devotion  was  "an 
indissoluble  Union  of  indestructible  states."  From  this 
conception  of  Country  and  Union  he  never  swerved  in 
word  or  deed  during  a  career  in  which  he  was  often  mis- 
understood, often  cruelly  maligned.  For  his  course 
and  conduct  he  was  calmly  content  to  wait  the  judgment 
of  later  generations. 

We  have  come  upon  a  time  when  the  old  idea  of 
statehood  is  being  obscured  by  a  cloud  of  fantastic  experi- 
ments under  the  name  of  a  centralized  "New  National- 


62 

ism,"  but  there  are  happily  indications  that  the  pendu- 
lum will  yet  swing  towards  a  reasonable  regard  for 
reasonable  and  constitutional  statehood. 

Franklin  Pierce  had  thirteen  predecessors  in  his  ex- 
alted office  of  President.  His  successors  also  number 
thirteen.  He  stands  midway  in  a  distinguished  line.  He 
may  not  have  been  the  greatest  in  that  line ;  his  star  may 
not  shine  the  most  resplendent;  but  in  purity  of  purpose 
and  of  character,  in  unswerving  loyalty  to  conviction,  in 
love  of  Country  and  Union,  in  steadfast  devotion  to  the 
right,  as  God  gave  him  to  see  the  right,  we  may  invite 
comparison  with  those  who  preceded  him,  and  with 
those  who  have  followed. 

New  Hampshire  pays  him  honor  to-day — belated  per- 
haps,— but  all  the  more  emphatic  because  belated.  New 
Hampshire  honors  his  memory,  not  impulsively  or  un- 
thinkingly, but  soberly,  thoughtfully,  reverently.  In 
honoring  him,  she  honors  herself. 


At  the  close  of  the  exercises  the  large  audience  joined 
in  singing  "America,"  led  by  the  band.  The  other 
numbers  by  the  band,  interspersed  with  the  addresses, 
included : 

Sextette — ' '  Lucia ' '  Donizetti 

Ballet— "  Dance  of  the  Hours"  Ponchietti 

Intermezzo — "Cavallieria  Rusticana"  Mascagni 

ending  with  a  selection  from  Wagner's  "Lohengrin." 


DAVID  E.   MURPHY 
Marshal  of  the  Day 


APPENDIX. 


FRANKLIN   PIERCE,   THE  LAWYER. 
BY  HON.  DAVID  CROSS.* 

IV/fR.  PRESIDENT  and  Brethren  of  the  New  Hamp- 
•  shire  Bar  Association : 

Charles  H.  Bell,  of  Exeter,  died  in  1893,  leaving  in 
manuscript  and  partly  printed  "The  Bench  and  Bar  of 
New  Hampshire,"  a  book  of  795  pages  of  rare  excellence, 
remarkable  discrimination,  and  great  ability,  containing 
the  names  of  1,472  lawyers,  including  the  name  of  every 
member  of  the  bar  who  has  lived  and  practised  in  the 
state,  together  with  biographical  notes  of  all  deceased 
lawyers  and  the  judges  of  the  higher  courts.  The  prepa- 
ration of  this  book  must  have  taken  the  patient  labor  of 
Mr.  Bell  for  many  years.  It  is  a  noble  and  enduring 
monument  to  his  memory.  It  is  remarkable  for  what 
it  says  clearly  and  fully  of  each,  and  for  what  it  omits  to 
say  according  to  usual  eulogy. 

Mr.  Bell  had  rare  ability  for  clear  statement  of  facts 
in  his  profession  and  he  brought  to  this  work  the  enthu- 
siasm and  earnest  devotion  of  years  of  observation  and 
study.  There  is  no  sameness  in  the  sketches;  each 
shows  the  lawyer  or  the  judge  as  he  was  known.  Some 
might  think  that  their  relative  or  friend  was  not  given 
sufficient  credit  for  legal  learning,  or  that  faults  were 
too  freely  recorded.  On  the  whole,  as  I  have  read  and 
re-read  sketches  of  those  I  have  known,  I  am  gratified 
and  delighted  at  their  fairness  and  justice,  and  sur- 
prised that  any  man  had  the  ability  to  give  such  a  varied 

*  Delivered  before  the  New  Hampshire  Bar  Association,  March  15,  1900. 
5 


66 

and  truthful  memorial  of  the  deceased  judges  and  law- 
yers of  the  state. 

After  having  given  considerable  time  to  the  study  of 
the  life  of  Franklin  Pierce  as  a  lawyer,  and  made  inquir- 
ies of  members  of  the  bar,  I  come  back  to  the  record  as 
given  by  Mr.  Bell  and  find  that  on  three  printed  pages 
he  has  given  such  a  portraiture,  so  comprehensive,  so 
clear,  so  exact,  that  at  first  it  seems  as  though  nothing 
can  be  added. 

As  I  have  read  over  the  names  in  Brother  Bell's  book, 
as  I  have  looked  into  the  sixty-eight  volumes  of  New 
Hampshire  Reports  and  examined  the  names  of  the 
judges,  I  am  surprised  to  find  that  with  the  exception  of 
Chief  Justice  Richardson,  Jeremiah  Smith,  senior,  and 
Samuel  Bell,  I  have  seen  every  judge  who  presided  at 
trial  terms,  and  every  one  whose  recorded  opinions  are 
in  the  New  Hampshire  Reports. 

As  a  boy  at  school  in  Hopkinton  I  remember  Judges 
Harris  and  Green.  I  remember  the  scholarly,  genial, 
high-minded  Gilchrist  who  pleased  everybody  by  his 
fairness,  and  who  left  in  the  New  Hampshire  Reports  evi- 
dence of  his  learning  and  ability.  I  remember  the  even- 
tempered,  patient,  upright,  modest  but  firm  Judge  Woods 
who  filled  his  office  with  credit  to  himself  and  to  the 
Bench.  I  remember  Joel  Parker  whose  very  look  and 
presence  commanded  respect  and  confidence  and  whose 
ability  as  a  lawyer,  while  upon  the  Bench,  and  while  a 
professor  at  Harvard  Law  School,  have  been  an  honor  to 
the  state,  and  placed  him  among  the  leading  jurists  of  the 
country.  I  remember,  as  some  few  of  you  may,  Judge 
Charles  F.  Gove,  able,  honest  and  forceful,  yet  irritable 
and  nervous  to  such  a  degree  that  lawyers  and  clients  felt 
obliged  to  move  with  softness  while  the  court  was  in  session 
lest  they  be  rebuked  and  perhaps  ordered  into  custody. 
I  remember  Judges  Bellows,  Eastman,  Perley,  Sargent, 


67 

Bell,  Bartlett,  Gushing,  Doe,  Ladd,  Bingham,  Smith, 
and  others. 

The  Bar  of  the  state  may  well  be  proud  of  the  men  who 
have  presided  in  our  highest  courts.  The  decisions  in 
our  sixty-eight  volumes  are  recognized  in  the  judicial 
tribunals  of  the  English-speaking  world  as  authority  upon 
the  questions  discussed. 

Of  the  lawyers,  as  well  as  the  judges,  whose  names 
appear  in  Mr.  Bell's  book,  it  seems  as  though  I  had  also 
seen  nearly  every  prominent  one  among  them. 

I  remember  being  introduced  to  Jeremiah  Mason  by 
Judge  Story  at  the  Harvard  Law  School  in  1842.  He 
was  a  wonder  to  look  upon,  six  and  one-half  feet  tall 
and  well  proportioned.  He  was  a  giant  physically,  and 
Daniel  Webster  declared  him  to  be  the  greatest  lawyer 
in  the  country. 

I  saw  Joseph  Bell  many  times.  Daniel  Webster  I 
heard  in  several  cases  in  Boston;  Ichabod  Bartlett  and 
Attorney-General  George  Sullivan  I  heard  in  the  Old 
North  Meeting-house  at  Concord  in  the  trial  of  Prescott 
for  murder  in  the  fall  of  1834.  The  musical  voice  and 
fascinating  manner  of  Mr.  Sullivan  and  the  eloquence 
and  forceful  manner  of  Ichabod  Bartlett  hold  an  abiding 
place  in  my  memory  as  I  recall  their  arguments.  John 
S.  Wells,  Daniel  M.  Christie,  James  Bell,  Daniel  Clark, 
George  W.  Morrison,  George  Y.  Sawyer,  A.  F.  Stevens, 
Bainbridge  Wadleigh,  A.  F.  Pike,  Gilman  Marston, 
Mark  Farley,  Charles  G.  Atherton,  James  Wilson, 
William  P.  Wheeler,  Thomas  J.  Whipple,  John  H.  George, 
John  Y.  Mugridge,  Daniel  Barnard,  Ossian  Ray,  A.  R. 
Hatch  and  many  others,  I  saw  in  court  and  know  some- 
thing of  their  ability  and  success  as  lawyers.  As  I 
attempt  to  characterize  such  men  as  Joel  Parker,  Gil- 
christ  and  Woods  as  I  saw  them  as  a  student  and  an 
attorney  beginning  practice,  a  sort  of  reverence  comes 


68 

t)ver  me  and  I  cannot  help  regarding  them  as  superior 
to  the  judges  of  the  present  day.  I  believe  that  Judge 
Doe  spoke  correctly  when  he  said  that  the  lawyers  and 
judges  of  the  present  day  are  better  educated  and  more 
thoroughly  equipped  in  the  law  than  sixty  years  ago. 
I  cannot,  however,  look  up  to  the  present  court  with 
quite  the  wonder  and  timidity  that  I  did  in  1841. 

As  illustrating  this  principle  of  reverence  for  older 
lawyers  and  judges  I  recollect  a  peculiar  incident  of  my 
early  schoolboy  days.  In  1829  a  man  was  arrested  in 
the  town  of  Weare  for  assault  and  battery.  David 
Steele  of  Goffstown  appeared  upon  one  side  and  Josiah 
Danforth  of  Weare  on  the  other.  The  trial  was  held 
in  the  schoolhouse  and  crowds  attended  the  hearing 
for  two  days.  I  can  remember  some  of  the  words 
spoken  upon  that  trial.  Mr.  Danforth,  in  his  desire  to 
impress  upon  the  justice  of  the  peace  who  held  the  court, 
the  solemnity  and  importance  of  the  occasion,  paid  a 
high  tribute  to  the  cause  of  education  and  the  school- 
house  in  which  the  court  was  held.  Among  other  things 
he  said,  "The  schoolhouse  is  the  sentinel-box  of  liberty." 
I  have  heard  many  tributes  paid  to  the  cause  of  common 
school  education  and  to  the  schoolhouse  of  New  England, 
but  I  have  never  heard  a  higher  than  this  by  Mr.  Dan- 
forth. The  two  men,  Steele  and  Danforth,  with  their 
ruffled  shirts  and  dignified  appearance,  continue  to 
impress  me  as  somehow  different  and  superior  to  other 
men,  although  subsequent  acquaintance  and  experience 
convinced  me  that  they  were  ordinary  lawyers. 

As  I  recall  the  lawyers  of  the  past  seventy  years,  as  I 
read  their  names  in  this  book  of  Mr.  Bell,  I  can  see  them, 
one  and  all;  they  are  real  to  me;  I  knew  them;  I  remem- 
ber them  now.  They  all  like  the  rest  of  us  struggled 
their  brief  day,  most  of  them  with  success. 

As  we  read  name  after  name  of  the  1,472  lawyers,  we 


69 

are  conscious  in  so  many  instances  that  it  is  only  a  name 
to  us,  and  that  the  real  life  and  what  it  accomplished  is 
not  recorded,  and  that  the  reputation  of  a  lawyer,  as  of 
most  men,  is  limited  to  his  own  time. 

This  Association,  as  I  understand  it,  proposes  to  per- 
petuate the  memory  of  the  lawyers  of  the  past,  and  at 
each  returning  annual  meeting  give  some  account  of 
those  who  have  finished  their  work.  In  this  record  of 
Mr.  Bell,  and  in  our  records  of  the  future  will  be  the 
names  of  many,  very  many,  not  known  beyond  their 
immediate  neighborhood  but  who  in  educational,  moral, 
and  social  influence  wrought  a  good  work  and  lived 
honorable  and  useful  lives.  There  is  hardly  a  statute 
from  1776,  which  has  not  been  modified  and  improved 
by  the  influence  and  work  of  members  of  our  profession. 
The  strange  and  senseless  methods  of  procedure  in  court 
have  given  place  to  good  sense  and  just  rules,  the  work 
entirely  of  judges  and  lawyers. 

Brethren,  we  have  a  rich  inheritance.  Among  the 
recorded  names  of  the  bar  of  this  state  are  men  who 
achieved  a  national,  and  some  of  them  a  world-wide, 
fame.  What  these  men  wrought  in  life  is  before  us. 
What  they  did  worthily  we  can  attempt  to  do.  The 
record  of  their  lives  is  a  bond  of  brotherhood;  it  is  an 
encouragement  and  inspiration  to  us,  and  to  those  who 
shall  follow,  to  recall  them  from  time  to  time  and  to 
learn  how  they  lived.  What  helped  them  in  their  suc- 
cesses and  defeats  may  well  be  worthy  of  our  considera- 
tion. 

I  am  honored  by  the  invitation  of  the  officers  of  this 
Association,  at  this  first  annual  meeting,  to  bring  to 
your  attention  Franklin  Pierce,  one  of  these  brothers  of 
the  past,  that  I  may  fulfil  the  obligation  that  each  and 
all  owe  to  our  profession,  and  comply  with  one  of  the 
leading  purposes  of  our  organization,  so  clearly  stated 


70 

in  Article  3  of  the  Constitution  which  reads, — "To  pre- 
serve the  memory  of  worthy  members  of  the  profession 
by  publishing  such  modest  and  truthful  accounts  of  their 
lives  and  doings  as  may  be  worthy  to  be  rescued  from  the 
oblivion  which  otherwise  so  inevitably  swallows  up  the 
most  devoted  and  useful  labors,  as  well  as  the  most 
brilliant  achievements  of  the  lawyer,  as  soon  as  he  is 
overtaken  by  the  fate  which  awaits  us  all,  and  retires 
from  the  field  of  his  activity, — his  victories  and  defeats." 

Almost  a  generation  has  passed  since  the  death  of 
General  Pierce.  But  few  remain  who  can  speak  of  him 
from  personal  knowledge  during  the  period  of  his  active 
life  from  1826  to  1857. 

The  law  was  his  chosen  profession  and  he  honored  it. 
The  foundation  of  what  he  accomplished  was  laid  in  the 
study  and  practice  of  law.  He  was  taken  from  our  ranks 
to  the  House  of  Representatives  and  Senate,  and  returned 
to  the  profession  with  such  enthusiasm  as  has  been  rarely 
seen.  He  was  again  called  to  the  highest  official  position 
in  the  world  as  President  of  the  United  States.  He 
lived  in  such  an  eventful  period  of  our  national  history, 
was  so  much  a  part  of  it,  that  his  ability  and  rank  as  a 
lawyer  are  obscured  and  forgotten. 

It  is  due  to  him  as  our  brother  that  this  Association 
review  his  life  and  place  upon  its  records  some  apprecia- 
tive memorial. 

His  life  as  a  lawyer  and  his  official  life  are  so  blended 
that  it  is  impossible  adequately  to  present  one  without 
giving  consideration  to  the  other,  and  full  justice  to  him 
as  lawyer,  citizen  and  high  official  can  only  be  done  by 
presenting  him  as  a  man,  and  what  in  his  early  life  and 
maturing  years  made  him  what  he  was. 

He  was  born  in  Hillsborough,  November  23,  1804. 
He  was  graduated  at  Bowdoin  College  at  twenty  years 
of  age.  He  took  an  honorable  position  as  a  scholar  dur- 


ing  his  college  course.  He  studied  law  in  the  offices  of 
Levi  Woodbury  in  Portsmouth,  Edward  Parker  at 
Amherst  and  at  the  Northampton  Law  School,  under 
Judge  Samuel  Howe,  Elijah  H.  Mills  and  John  H.  Ash- 
man. Ashman  was  afterwards  one  of  the  professors  at 
the  Harvard  Law  School.  The  system  of  instruction  of 
the  law  school  of  that  time  comprised  a  course  of  lectures 
in  the  various  departments  of  the  law,  recitations  and 
examinations  in  the  principal  elementary  works,  moot 
courts  and  discussions,  oral  and  written,  upon  legal 
questions.  His  opportunity  for  learning  law  was  excep- 
tionally good,  better  than  most  young  men  of  his  time. 
In  1827,  at  twenty- three  years  of  age,  he  was  admitted 
to  the  bar  and  opened  an  office  in  the  lower  village  of 
Hillsborough,  in  a  small  building  of  the  kind  such  as 
country  lawyers  were  accustomed  to  use,  and  there  con- 
tinued his  office  until  he  moved  to  Concord  about  1838. 

In  1834  he  was  married  to  Jane  Means  Appleton, 
daughter  of  Rev.  Dr.  Jesse  Appleton,  president  of  Bow- 
doin  College.  There  were  three  children  born  to  them: 
the  first  died  in  infancy,  the  second,  Frank  Robert, 
in  1844,  in  his  fourth  year,  and  the  third,  Benjamin,  in 
January,  1853,  in  the  eleventh  year  of  his  age. 

It  is  said  of  her:  "Her  fine  natural  endowments  were 
developed  by  a  careful  and  generous  culture,  not  merely 
under  the  forms  of  education,  but  through  the  agency  of 
all  the  impressions  and  influences  of  her  early  home,  and 
the  circle  of  related  families.  Her  tastes  were  of  exceed- 
ing delicacy  and  purity.  Her  eyes  appreciated  in  a 
remarkable  degree  whatever  was  beautiful  in  nature  and 
art.  She  shrank  with  extreme  sensitiveness  from  public 
observation.  It  is  no  disparagement  to  others  who  have 
occupied  her  station  at  the  White  House  to  claim  for  her 
an  unsurpassed  dignity  and  grace,  delicacy  and  purity  in 
all  that  public  life.  There  was  a  home — a  Christian 


72 

home — quietly  and  constantly  maintained,  and  very 
many  hearts  rejoice  in  its  blessedness." 

From  1842  to  1852,  with  the  exception  of  one  year 
while  in  the  Mexican  War,  was  the  time  of  his  most 
entire  and  devoted  attention  to  the  practice  of  law. 

Let  me  give  a  brief  outline  of  his  life  outside  of  the 
practice  of  law  from  his  twenty-fifth  to  his  forty-eighth 
year. 

From  his  twenty-fifth  to  his  twenty-ninth  year  of  age 
he  was  a  member  of  the  House  of  Representatives  from 
Hillsborough  for  four  years,  two  of  which  he  was  speaker. 
At  the  age  of  twenty-nine  he  was  elected  to  the  United 
States  House  of  Representatives  and  held  the  office  for 
four  years.  At  thirty-three  years  of  age  he  was  elected 
United  States  senator  for  six  years,  and  there  with  Web- 
ster, Clay,  Benton,  Calhoun  and  other  great  men  of  the 
time,  held  a  respectable  standing  for  five  years,  and  then 
resigned  and  returned  to  New  Hampshire  to  practise 
law. 

In  1838,  when  he  was  about  to  change  his  residence  from 
Hillsborough  to  Concord,  the  citizens  of  Hillsborough 
tendered  him  an  invitation  to  a  public  dinner,  and  in 
his  answer  declining  he  said,  "I  shall  leave  Hillsborough 
with  no  ordinary  regret.  There  are  a  thousand  reasons 
why  it  cannot  be  otherwise — I  have  hitherto  known  no 
other  home. 

''Here  have  passed  many  of  the  happiest  days  and 
months  of  my  life.  With  these  streams  and  mountains 
are  associated  most  of  the  delightful  recollections  of 
buoyant  and  happy  boyhood,  and  in  my  early  intercourse 
with  the  generous,  independent  and  intelligent  yeomanry 
of  Hillsborough  I  became  attached  to,  and  learned  how 
highly  to  appreciate  that  class  of  the  community  which 
constitutes  the  true  nobility  of  this  country.  I  need 
hardly  say  that  I  shall  never  cease  to  remember  my 


73 

birthplace  with  pride  as  well  as  with  affection,  and  with 
still  more  pride  shall  I  recollect  the  steady,  unqualified 
and  generous  confidence  which  has  been  reposed  in  me 
by  its  inhabitants." 

Upon  the  appointment  of  Levi  Woodbury  as  judge  of 
the  United  States  Supreme  Court  in  1846,  he  was  offered 
by  Governor  Steele  the  appointment  of  United  States 
senator  and  declined  it.  In  his  letter  declining  to  accept, 
he  said:  "My  personal  wishes  and  purposes  in  1842, 
when  I  resigned  the  seat  in  the  senate  were,  as  I  sup- 
posed, so  perfectly  understood  that  I  have  not,  for  a 
moment,  contemplated  a  return  to  public  life.  Without 
adverting  to  other  grounds  which  would  have  much 
influence  in  forming  my  decision,  the  situation  of  my 
business,  professional  and  otherwise,  is  such  that  it  would 
be  impossible  for  me  to  leave  the  state  suddenly,  as  I 
should  be  called  upon  to  do,  and  be  absent  for  months, 
without  sacrificing,  to  a  certain  extent,  the  interests, 
and  disregarding  the  reasonable  expectations,  of  those 
who  rely  upon  my  services." 

In  1846  his  party  offered  to  nominate  him  for  governor 
of  the  state  and  he  declined  it.  The  same  year  he  was 
offered  by  President  Polk  a  place  in  his  cabinet  as 
attorney-general.  President  Polk  in  his  letter  tender- 
ing him  the  office,  said,  "I  have  selected  you  for  this 
important  office  from  my  personal  knowledge  of  you, 
and  without  the  solicitation  or  suggestion  of  anyone. 
I  have  done  so  because  I  have  no  doubt  your  personal 
association  with  me  would  be  pleasant,  and  from  the 
consideration  that,  in  the  discharge  of  the  duties  of  the 
office,  you  could  render  me  important  aid  in  conducting 
my  administration." 

In  declining  to  accept  this  position  General  Pierce  said : 
"Although  the  early  years  of  my  manhood  were  devoted 
to  public  life,  it  was  never  really  suited  to  my  taste.  I 


74 

longed,  as  I  am  sure  you  must  often  have  done,  for  the 
quiet  and  independence  that  belongs  only  to  the  private 
citizen,  and  now,  at  forty,  I  feel  that  desire  stronger 
than  ever. 

"Coming  unexpectedly,  as  this  offer  does,  it  would 
be  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  arrange  the  business  of 
an  extensive  practice,  in  a  manner  at  all  satisfactory  to 
myself,  or  to  those  who  have  committed  their  interests 
to  my  care,  and  who  rely  on  my  services.  When  I 
resigned  my  seat  in  the  senate  in  1842,  I  did  it  with  the 
fixed  purpose  never  again  to  be  voluntarily  separated 
from  my  family  for  any  considerable  length  of  time, 
except  at  the  call  of  my  country  in  the  time  of  war." 

During  the  same  year  he  accepted  the  office  of  United 
States  district  attorney  for  the  state  of  New  Hampshire 
as  in  the  line  of  his  profession. 

In  1847  he  enlisted  as  a  private  in  a  New  Hampshire 
company  for  the  war  with  Mexico,  and  was  made  colonel, 
brigadier-general,  and  major-general,  and  served  during 
that  campaign.  In  1852  the  delegates  from  New  Hamp- 
shire to  the  National  Democratic  Convention  desired  to 
bring  his  name  before  the  convention  as  President  of  the 
United  States,  and  he  refused  to  allow  them  to  present 
his  name.  In  1850  he  was  elected  president  of  the  New 
Hampshire  Constitutional  Convention  by  a  vote  of  257 
to  6.  In  a  letter  to  a  New  Hampshire  delegate  to  the 
National  Convention  he  wrote,  in  1852,  "The  same 
motive  which  induced  me  several  years  ago  to  retire 
from  public  life,  and  which  since  that  time  has  controlled 
my  judgment  in  this  respect,  now  impels  me  to  say  that 
the  use  of  my  name,  in  any  event,  before  the  Democratic 
National  Convention  at  Baltimore,  to  which  you  are  a 
delegate,  would  be  utterly  repugnant  to  my  tastes  and 
wishes." 

In  a  letter  dated  May  27,  1852,  to  another  of  the  New 


75 

Hampshire  delegates,  he  wrote,  "As  I  told  you,  my 
name  will  not  be  before  the  convention;  but  I  cannot 
help  feeling  that  what  there  is  to  be  done  will  be  impor- 
tant beyond  men  and  parties — transcendently  important 
to  the  hopes  of  Democratic  progress  and  civil  liberty." 

In  June,  1852,  at  the  age  of  forty-seven  he  was  nomi- 
nated for  President  of  the  United  States  and  in  November 
was  elected,  receiving  the  electoral  vote  of  twenty-seven 
out  of  thirty-one  states  of  the  Union.  No  other  man  in 
New  Hampshire  has  ever  held  the  office  of  President  of 
the  United  States,  no  man  has  held  offices  such  as  he 
held  with  less  apparent  effort  to  obtain  them.  No  law- 
yer has  ever  been  elected  to  the  place  of  senator  of  the 
United  States  and  resigned  before  his  term  of  office  had 
expired  and  returned  to  the  drudgery  and  routine  of 
the  profession. 

What  was  there  in  his  parentage,  his  early  life  and 
association,  which  might  tend  to  give  him  mental  fiber 
and  character  and  to  give  to  the  world  a  prophecy  of 
his  qualities  as  a  lawyer? 

The  town  of  Hillsborough  where  he  was  born,  the 
scenery,  the  hills,  the  winter  and  summer  life  upon  the 
farm,  were  much  the  same  as  country  boys  of  the  first 
part  of  the  century  saw  throughout  New  Hamsphire. 

His  father,  Governor  Benjamin  Pierce,  was  a  marked 
man  in  appearance,  rather  short,  thick-set,  an  honest, 
inviting  face,  his  eyes  bright  and  merry,  his  lips  firm, 
his  words  nervous,  quick  and  decisive,  as  I  saw  him 
during  two  winters  of  1834-35  and  1835-36.  He  was  a 
successful  farmer  of  more  than  average  property  for 
farmers  of  his  time.  Night  after  night,  during  the  win- 
ter months,  around  the  big,  open  fireplace  with  its  bright 
light,  gathered  his  group  of  children.  I  can  seem  to  see 
the  old  man  as  he  calls  the  curly-headed,  bright-eyed 
Frank  to  his  side  and  tells  him  of  his  early  life.  Over 


76 

and  over  again  he  relates  to  the  eager  and  attentive  boy 
facts  which  seem  now  to  be  romantic  legends. 

In  substance  a  part  of  the  story  was  that  at  six  years 
of  age  his  father  died ;  that  at  eighteen  years  of  age  notice 
came  to  Chelmsford,  Massachusetts,  April  19,  1775, 
while  he  was  plowing  in  the  field,  of  a  battle  going  on  at 
Lexington;  that  he  left  the  plough,  took  his  uncle's  gun 
and  military  equipments,  and  started  for  Lexington; 
that  he  was  one  of  the  "irregulars"  who  rode  and  fired 
at  will,  following  Pitcairn's  soldiers  towards  Boston; 
that  he  took  part  in  the  Battle  of  Bunker  Hill;  that  he 
enlisted  in  the  army  of  the  United  States,  and  was  present 
in  many  a  hard-fought  battle ;  that  at  one  time  seeing  the 
flag  struck  down,  he  rushed  forward,  seized  the  staff, 
and  raised  the  flag,  and  led  on  the  fight  for  which  he  was 
promoted  to  the  rank  of  ensign;  that  he  was  afterwards 
made  captain;  that  Washington  called  him  into  his 
presence  and  made  him  a  member  of  his  staff;  that  for 
nine  years  he  continued  in  the  service  of  the  United 
States  engaged  in  every  vicissitude  of  battle  until  the 
close  of  the  Revolutionary  War;  that  at  the  close  of  the 
war  he  came  to  the  town  of  Hillsborough,  then  almost 
a  wilderness,  and  purchased  fifty  acres  of  land  and  built 
upon  it  a  log  hut,  and  for  a  year  lived  alone,  getting  his 
own  meals,  sleeping  upon  a  blanket  as  he  had  been 
accustomed  to  do  during  the  years  of  his  service  in  the 
army. 

Governor  Pierce  was  always  a  generous,  kind-hearted 
man  and  liberal  at  all  times  for  public,  religious  and 
charitable  purposes.  One  of  the  most  characteristic 
acts  of  his  life,  which  tells  us  more  than  words  can 
express  his  liberality  and  kindness  of  heart,  was  that 
when  he  was  elected  sheriff  of  Hillsborough  County  in 
1818  he  found  in  the  jail  at  Amherst  three  men  imprisoned 
for  debt.  One  had  been  there  four  years,  one  three,  and 


77 

the  third  for  one  year.  Governor  Pierce,  then  sheriff, 
had  no  legal  right  or  authority  to  discharge  these  men 
from  prison,  but  moved  by  his  own  kindly  feelings  he 
paid  the  debt  of  each  for  which  they  were  imprisoned 
and  set  them  free.  By  the  law  of  the  state  at  that  time 
anyone  who  failed  to  pay  his  debts  might  be  imprisoned. 

Benjamin  Pierce,  although  uneducated,  had  the  capac- 
ity, the  energy  and  the  character  to  gain  the  respect  and 
confidence  of  the  people  of  his  town  and  the  state,  so 
that  he  held  for  thirteen  years  the  office  of  representative 
from  Hillsborough,  and  subsequently  of  sheriff  of  the 
county,  of  state  councilor  and  governor,  and  in  all  the 
positions  he  acquitted  himself  with  honor  and  credit  to 
himself  and  the  state. 

Franklin  Pierce  must  have  been  present  when,  in  1816, 
his  father  invited  all  the  surviving  officers  and  soldiers 
who  had  served  in  the  War  of  the  Revolution  and  the 
War  of  1812,  to  an  entertainment  at  his  home.  The 
day  was  spent  in  feasting  and  in  reminiscence  of  their 
past  lives.  It  was  an  event  calculated  to  impress  upon 
the  mind  of  any  sensitive  and  enthusiastic  boy  feelings 
of  loyalty  and  patriotism. 

From  his  birth  to  his  entering  college  in  1820,  there 
lived  in  the  town  of  Hillsborough  such  men  as  John 
Gilbert,  who  was  at  the  Battle  of  Bunker  Hill  and  through 
the  War  of  the  Revolution;  the  descendants  of  Isaac 
Baldwin,  killed  in  the  same  battle;  John  McNeil,  a  cap- 
tain in  the  War  of  the  Revolution;  General  John  McNeil, 
distinguished  in  the  Battle  of  Chippewa  and  at  Lundy's 
Lane.  These  men  and  their  associates  were  often  visi- 
tors and  on  the  most  intimate  terms  with  the  family  of 
Governor  Pierce. 

From  such  parentage,  with  such  associations  in  his 
boyhood  and  early  manhood,  he  could  not  help  being 
imbued  with  the  strongest  feelings  of  patriotism  and 


78 

devotion  to  his  country,  with  the  highest  regard  for  men 
of  every  class,  with  the  highest  and  best  idea  of  integrity 
and  honor,  and  no  son  with  such  parents,  brothers, 
friends  and  townsmen  could  fail  to  be  impelled  by  every 
thought  and  impulse  to  choose  for  himself  what  was 
highest  and  noblest. 

Between  1844  and  1852  I  heard  General  Pierce  in 
several  trials  before  a  jury. 

In  1845  he  assisted  me  in  the  trial  of  my  first  case 
before  the  jury  at  Amherst.  George  W.  Morrison  was 
on  the  other  side. 

Mr.  Pierce  came  to  my  room,  examined  the  writ  and 
pleadings,  and  talked  with  the  witnesses.  After  we  were 
alone  he  said  to  me:  "You  can  try  this  case  alone. 
There  is  no  need  of  my  assistance."  I  told  him  I  wanted 
his  help.  He  then  said:  "I  advise  you  to  try  every  case 
you  get  a  chance  to  try.  You  may  fail,  but  no  matter. 
I  failed  in  my  first  case,  but  I  then  resolved  that  I  would 
try  999  cases  and  fail  every  time,  if  clients  gave  me  a 
chance,  rather  than  give  up." 

His  manner  of  examining  the  papers  and  preparing  for 
trial  was  so  kind  and  brotherly  and  his  suggestions 
about  trials  so  useful  that  it  made  an  impression,  and 
gave  me  courage  to  attempt  success. 

I  have  never  found  another  lawyer,  possibly  excepting 
George  Y.  Sawyer,  who  was  so  kind  and  so  frank  and  full 
of  suggestive  points. 

As  a  typical  case  allow  me  to  give  somewhat  in  detail 
one  trial  as  I  saw  it.  The  case  of  McDougal  v.  Shirley 
was  a  libel  for  publishing  an  article  in  a  newspaper  called 
The  Gleaner,  and  attracted  more  public  attention  at  the 
time  than  that  of  any  civil  case.  This  newspaper  from 
somewhere  in  1838  to  1846  was  published  in  Manchester 
by  John  Caldwell.  It  was  a  vile  sheet,  and  was  filled 
weekly  with  vile  and  slanderous  talk  about  men  and 


79 

women  in  all  stations  of  life.  From  country  towns 
letters  were  written  to  the  editor  for  fun,  but  generally 
from  malice. 

In  1845  an  article  appeared  libelling  the  character  of 
Mr.  McDougal  of  Goffstown.  He  was  a  substantial 
farmer,  a  man  of  good  standing  in  society,  and  good 
character  in  every  respect.  He  was  much  incensed  at 
the  charges  made  in  The  Gleaner,  and  called  upon  the 
publisher  of  the  paper  to  learn  the  author.  The  editor, 
or  some  of  his  employees,  gave  him  to  understand  that 
it  was  Mr.  Shirley,  another  respectable  farmer  of  the 
town.  A  suit  was  brought  by  George  Barstow,  a  lawyer 
in  Manchester,  against  Shirley,  and  at  the  April  term, 
1846,  there  was  a  trial  at  Amherst.  George  Barstow 
and  Governor  Henry  Hubbard  appeared  for  the  plain- 
tiff; David  Steele  of  Goffstown,  J.  U.  Parker  of  Merri- 
mack,  and  Franklin  Pierce  for  the  defendant. 

Judge  Gilchrist  with  two  side  judges  presided.  The 
people  of  Goffstown,  Bedford,  Manchester,  and  Am- 
herst were  all  deeply  interested  in  the  parties  and  the 
result  of  the  trial.  The  good  character  and  standing 
of  the  parties  brought  many  friends  to  each  side,  and  the 
court-house  was  filled  with  spectators  for  many  days 
during  the  trial.  A  large  number  of  witnesses  were 
called  upon  both  sides.  At  that  time  neither  the  plain- 
tiff nor  the  defendant  was  allowed  to  testify. 

George  Barstow,  for  the  plaintiff,  was  an  accomplished, 
scholarly  man  and  learned  in  the  law.  He  occupied 
quite  a  conspicuous  position  in  Manchester  for  many  years 
as  a  lawyer.  He  was  the  author  of  a  history  of  New 
Hampshire  and  went  from  Manchester  to  San  Francisco 
where  it  is  said  he  acquired  wealth  and  reputation. 

Henry  Hubbard  had  been  governor  of  the  state  and 
United  States  senator  and  was  regarded  as  one  of  the 
ablest  lawyers  of  the  state. 


8o 

For  the  defense  David  Steele  of  Goffstown  who  had 
acquired  such  a  reputation  in  laying  out  and  discon- 
tinuing highways  that  Charles  G.  Atherton,  at  one  time 
in  discussing  some  questions  before  the  court  in  which 
Mr.  Steele  was  upon  the  other  side,  in  his  quiet,  crisp 
way  said,  "I  cannot  be  expected  to  dispute  my  brother 
Steele  upon  this  point  when  we  all  recognize  in  him  'The 
Collossus  of  Rhodes.'  ' 

James  U.  Parker  of  Merrimack  was  an  entirely  differ- 
ent man.  He  was  a  sharp,  keen  man,  armed  at  all  points 
upon  questions  of  evidence  before  a  jury  and  never  for- 
got to  take  advantage  of  the  weak  points  of  his  adversary 
or  to  use  to  the  utmost  the  good  points  upon  his  own  side. 

Many  people  besides  the  publisher  of  The  Gleaner  and 
the  parties  had  an  interest  in  the  trial  of  this  case,  and 
Governor  Hubbard  had  been  selected  as  the  ablest  and 
best  lawyer  to  meet  Mr.  Pierce.  Hubbard,  as  governor 
and  United  States  senator,  was  known  politically  but 
had  no  hold  upon  the  jury  in  Hillsborough  County. 
Pierce,  as  was  his  custom  in  every  case  in  which  he  was 
engaged,  knew  the  name  and  locality  of  every  juryman, 
and  not  only  knew  everyone  during  the  trial  but  if  he 
had  met  him  one  year  or  ten  years  afterwards  anywhere  he 
could  have  called  him  by  name.  In  this  respect  Pierce 
was  like  James  G.  Elaine  and  Ben  Butler,  who  never  for- 
got the  face  or  name  of  any  man  they  had  once  become 
acquainted  with,  and  at  one  time  after  his  presidential 
term  of  office  was  over  said,  that  until  he  went  to  Wash- 
ington as  President,  he  never  forgot  any  man  whom  he 
had  once  met  and  whose  name  he  had  learned. 

Another  advantage  which  Pierce  had  at  this  trial  was, 
that  every  juryman  not  only  respected  him,  but  had  a 
sort  of  love  and  state  pride  in  him  beyond  what  had 
been  towards  any  other  man  in  the  history  of  our  state. 
In  the  course  of  the  trial  a  son  of  the  defendant,  then 


8i 

thirteen  years  of  age,  now  well  known  as  Colonel  Shirley, 
was  called  as  a  witness.  His  testimony  was  important 
for  the  defense,  as  it  contradicted  one  of  the  principal 
witnesses  for  the  plaintiff.  It  related  to  the  plaintiff's 
witness  visiting  the  defendant  to  buy  a  yoke  of  oxen,  and 
to  conversation  that  passed  between  the  parties.  The 
boy  testified  that  he  remembered  the  circumstances 
and  the  talk,  because  the  oxen  were  his  favorites  and  he 
called  it  that  he  owned  them,  and  did  not  wish  his  father 
to  sell  them. 

Hubbard  cross-examined  the  boy  quietly  and  gently 
but  could  not  lead  him  in  any  way  to  contradict  his  testi- 
mony. Then  finally  he  arose  from  his  seat,  approached 
him,  and  in  earnest  and  almost  savage  manner  attempted 
to  overawe  and  frighten  him.  The  boy  stood  the  test 
and  waited  with  perfect  ease  to  see  what  was  next,  turn- 
ing his  eyes  affectionately  and  reliantly  upon  Pierce. 

Pierce  had  watched  this  cross-examination.  His  in- 
terest in  the  case  and  his  sympathy  for  the  boy  were  in- 
tense, and  as  the  last  answer  was  given  and  as  their  eyes 
met,  there  was  such  a  glow  in  the  face  and  eyes  of  Pierce 
that  as  Colonel  Shirley  to-day  will  tell  you,  it  seemed 
as  if  a  sunburst  with  a  soft  mellow  light  fell  upon  him 
and  every  juryman.  It  touched  the  hearts  of  everyone 
who  saw  it.  This  appearance  upon  the  face  of  General 
Pierce  has  been  noted  by  others  in  similar  cases. 

Hon.  Joseph  W.  Fellows  of  Manchester  relates  an  in- 
cident of  a  trial  in  some  country  town,  when  he  was  a 
boy  of  some  fifteen  or  sixteen  years  of  age,  and  he  de- 
scribes the  appearance  as  a  sort  of  illumination  on  the 
face  which  made  a  deep  and  lasting  impression  upon  his 
memory.  This  same  appearance  although  peculiar  to 
General  Pierce,  has  been  noticed  in  the  description  of 
S.  S.  Prentiss  of  Mississippi,  of  William  Pinckney  and 
others. 


82 

Pierce  was  fully  prepared  upon  the  facts  and  law  of  the 
case.  He  knew  and  was  prepared  to  prove  that  two  of 
the  witnesses  for  the  plaintiff  were  absolutely  and  wil- 
fully false.  There  was  one  Plynn  White,  witness  for  the 
plaintiff,  an  associate  of  the  publisher  of  The  Gleaner, 
who  had  testified  to  seeing  the  defendant  in  Manchester 
in  conversation  with  Caldwell,  the  publisher,  whose  testi- 
mony, if  true,  would  tend  strongly  against  the  defendant. 
At  first  Pierce  quietly  questioned  Plynn  White  and  led 
him  to  thoughts  almost  entirely  outside  of  the  case;  he 
then  called  the  witness's  attention  to  the  exact  locality 
where  he  stood,  and  where  Shirley  and  Caldwell  stood, 
and  in  various  ways  brought  White  to  swear  positively 
over  and  over  again  as  to  the  exact  position. 

The  whole  cross-examination  was  so  apparently  fair 
and  yet  brought  the  witness  to  testify  so  positively  that 
anyone  who  was  previously  familiar  with  the  facts,  or 
as  they  were  afterwards  developed,  recognized  Pierce's 
tact  and  ingenuity.  In  rebuttal,  General  Pierce  showed 
by  the  testimony  of  two  reliable  witnesses,  that  if  Plynn 
White's  story  was  true  he  must  have  seen  through  the 
brick  walls  of  the  city  hall. 

He  made  no  mistake  in  his  cross-examination  in  this 
case,  and  it  was  one  of  his  greatest  qualifications  in  the 
trial  before  a  jury  that  he  never  made  a  mistake  in  his 
appreciation  of  the  witness  before  him.  He  seemed  to 
have  an  intuitive  knowledge  of  the  honesty  or  dishonesty, 
or  the  mental  weakness  or  strong  points,  of  a  witness.  It 
was  the  custom  at  that  time  for  counsel  to  contest  the 
admissibility  of  much  of  the  evidence  brought  before  the 
court.  This  was  so  customary  that  no  one  thought  such 
objections  would  injure  his  case  in  the  minds  of  the  jury; 
in  fact,  no  lawyer  was  thought  to  have  done  his  duty 
unless  he  objected  to  the  utmost  to  the  admissibility  of 
much  of  the  evidence. 


83 

It  was  a  rare  treat,  when  such  a  question  came  upf 
to  see  the  quiet,  yet  dignified  and  deferential  manner 
of  General  Pierce  towards  the  court,  and  towards  the 
counsel  in  presenting  objections.  If  the  court  should 
rule  against  him  he  made  the  jury  believe  that  he  was 
right  and  the  court  was  wrong. 

After  many  days  of  trial  Pierce's  argument  for  the 
defense  occupied,  as  I  remember  it,  some  three  or  four 
hours.  He  began  in  a  conversational  tone,  presenting 
to  the  jury  the  importance  of  the  case  and  the  duty  de- 
volving upon  each  of  them.  He  spoke  of  the  plaintiff 
and  the  defendant  in  equal  terms  of  kindness,  that  they 
were  both  honest,  fair-minded  farmers  and  neighbors 
in  Goffstown,  that  the  plaintiff  had  been  deceived  by 
others  and  led  to  the  belief  of  the  guilt  of  the  defendant, 
that  when  the  article  appeared  in  the  newspaper  and  the 
plaintiff  called  upon  the  publisher  demanding  the  name 
of  the  author,  Caldwell,  knowing  that  Shirley  was  a  man 
of  property,  insinuated  first  that  he  was  the  author,  and 
finally  both  Caldwell  and  Plynn  White  asserted  posi- 
tively that  Shirley  was  the  guilty  man. 

It  was  contended  by  Pierce  that  a  man  by  the  name  of 
Wells  had  written  the  article,  partly  in  fun  and  partly 
in  revenge.  Wells  was  a  man  of  no  property,  and 
Caldwell  with  Wells'  assistance  made  McDougall,  the 
plaintiff,  believe  that  it  was  the  work  of  Shirley.  The 
arraignment  of  the  three  conspirators,  Caldwell,  White, 
and  Wells,  for  sarcasm  and  bitterness  of  invective,  and 
at  the  same  time  so  just  according  to  the  evidence,  I 
have  never  seen  or  heard  equaled  in  any  court.  While 
he  commented  upon  the  testimony  of  the  boy  Shirley, 
and  the  weight  the  jury  should  give  to  it  compared  with 
that  given  by  the  man  proven  guilty  of  perjury,  he  ex- 
hibited a  specimen  of  eloquence  rarely  seen  anywhere. 
I  wish  I  could  give  his  words;  I  cannot,  but  I  remember 


84 

clearly  the  apology  and  sympathy  for  his  distinguished 
opponent,  his  imploring  the  jury  to  fairly  and  dispas- 
sionately consider  and  weigh  the  testimony  of  the  boy, 
and  this  man,  exclaiming  in  a  quotation  from  one  of 
William  Pinckney's  arguments,  "Place  the  testimony 
of  this  man  in  one  scale,  and  of  the  boy  in  the  other  scale, 
and  the  weight  of  the  man's  testimony  is  lighter  than  the 
down  which  flies  from  a  linnet's  wing." 

His  argument  in  this  case  for  ability,  clear  and  beauti- 
ful illustration,  apt  quotations  and  pathos,  has  never 
been  equaled  in  New  Hampshire.  It  was  the  eloquence 
which  stirs  and  rules  the  heart  and  conquers  the  reason. 

When  General  Pierce  closed  his  argument  there  was  not 
a  juryman  and  hardly  a  man  in  the  court-house  whose 
cheeks  were  not  wet  with  tears. 

Governor  Hubbard,  with  his  first  words,  said,  "Gentle- 
men, I  did  not  come  to  bore  for  water."  These  words 
were  a  sad  mistake.  Every  person  felt  it  a  sort  of  criti- 
cism upon  himself  for  the  exhibition  of  sympathy  which 
he  could  not  control.  Hubbard,  in  a  long  argument, 
was  able,  energetic,  and  logical.  With  splendid  figure, 
head  leaning  back  somewhat  in  the  attitude  we  see  in  the 
pictures  of  Henry  Clay,  he  walked  up  and  down  by  the 
side  of  the  table  before  the  jury  and  argued  and  pleaded 
with  great  ability.  Although  at  times  quiet  and  sub- 
dued, he  was  often  fierce,  declamatory  and  thunderous 
in  voice,  and  towards  the  close  he  was  actually  frothing 
at  the  mouth  with  the  spittle  scattered  around  him. 
Hubbard  failed  utterly  to  reach  the  hearts  of  the  jury. 
He  talked  and  talked  and  argued  and  declaimed  in  vain, 
for  Pierce  had  captured  the  heart  of  every  juryman,  and 
when  they  retired  they  immediately  gave  a  verdict  for 
the  defendant. 

I  heard  General  Pierce  in  many  other  cases  in  Hills- 
borough  County  between  the  years  of  1843  and  1852, 


85 

notably  his  defense  of  the  Wentworths  for  the  Parker 
murder  in  1846.  In  every  case  he  was  master  of  the  sit- 
uation. Friends,  political  and  social,  never  stood  in  his 
way  of  doing  justice  to  his  client.  There  was  never  any 
indifference  or  half-heartedness  in  his  efforts.  He  did 
his  best  in  every  case;  there  was  an  apparent  seriousness 
in  every  case.  The  first  thing  that  attracted  one's  atten- 
tion in  listening  to  his  arguments  was  the  absolute  sincer- 
ity, depth  and  fervor  of  his  conviction.  It  may  be  truth- 
fully said  of  him  as  was  said  of  S.  S.  Prentiss  of  Missis- 
sippi, "  Before  he  uttered  a  word  you  felt  by  his  very  look 
and  air  that  he  was  deeply  in  earnest,  and  no  sooner  had 
he  opened  his  lips  than  you  felt  it  by  the  quick,  respon- 
sive sympathy  in  your  own  bosom."  Some  men,  like 
Webster,  require  a  great  occasion  or  a  case  of  unusual 
importance  to  arouse  them  to  their  best  efforts.  I  have 
heard  Webster  when  to  all  appearances  he  was  indiffer- 
ent and  slow. 

Rufus  Choate  and  Franklin  Pierce  could  not  help 
being  stirred  and  nerved  to  their  utmost  effort  in  every 
case,  and  on  every  occasion  when  they  made  an  argu- 
ment before  a  jury.  Eloquence  with  them  was  as  natural 
as  a  song  with  the  thrush.  When  I  say  it  was  natural, 
I  mean  that  it  was  inborn;  that  physically  and  mentally 
they  were  fitted  for  eloquent  speakers,  and  these  natural 
gifts  had  been  cultivated  and  improved  by  years  of  per- 
sistent labor  and  effort.  Pierce's  first  efforts  before  a 
jury  were  failures,  but  by  perseverance  he  overcame 
all  obstacles.  Judge  Perley  said  of  him,  "He  always 
knew  the  law  in  every  case." 

Joel  Parker,  in  his  address  before  the  Harvard  Law 
School  in  1853  upon  Daniel  Webster,  in  speaking  of 
courtesy  towards  opposing  counsel  said:  "And  in  this 
connection  I  may  repeat  to  you,  that  I  have  never  wit- 
nessed professional  civility  of  a  higher  or  more  uniform 


86 

character  than  that  exhibited  by  the  gentleman  who 
now  holds  the  office  of  the  president  of  United  States, 
and  by  the  learned  brother  (Judge  Perley),  for  years  his 
opposing  counsel  at  the  bar,  who  has  since  adorned  the 
bench  of  the  Superior  Court  of  New  Hampshire." 

Judge  William  L.  Foster,  in  his  address  before  the 
Southern  Bar  Association  in  1894,  said:  "I  shall  only 
express  the  universal  sentiment  of  all  who  knew  him, 
when  I  say  that  he  was  probably  the  most  brilliant  ad- 
vocate ever  known  in  New  Hampshire.  His  fascinating 
grace,  eloquence  and  power  were  unequaled;  and  his 
success  as  a  jury  lawyer  was  unattained  by  any  other 
member  of  the  profession." 

Judge  Sylvester  Dana,  who  was  a  student  in  the  office 
of  Pierce  &  Minot  from  1839  to  1843,  writes  me  as  fol- 
lows: "Pierce  was  the  most  affable  of  men,  and  his  stu- 
dents shared  largely  in  his  kindly  courtesies.  He  was 
accustomed  to  discuss  with  us  legal  and  other  questions 
as  though  we  were  his  equals,  and  contributed  in  many 
ways  to  make  us  feel  at  home.  He  gave  to  his  cases  the 
most  laborious  and  exhaustive  preparation,  leaving  no 
details,  however  minute,  unexplored.  He  never  took  a 
legal  position  before  the  court  which  he  did  not  believe 
to  be  tenable." 

Honorable  Benjamin  F.  Ayer,  who  commenced  prac- 
tice of  the  law  in  Manchester,  and  for  many  years  has 
been  one  of  the  foremost  lawyers  in  Chicago,  in  writing 
me  of  General  Pierce  says:  "He  was  a  lawyer  of  very 
remarkable  powers,  and  I  am  chargeable  with  no  exag- 
geration in  saying  that  among  those  I  have  known  in  the 
profession  who  have  been  distinguished  as  advocates 
before  juries,  I  have  never  met  his  superior.  He  was 
eminently  a  man  of  whom  the  bar  in  his  native  state — 
and  no  state  has  been  more  prolific  of  great  lawyers — 
may  be  justly  proud." 


87 

Brother  J.  W.  Fellows  says  that  in  1845  a  school 
teacher  was  arrested  in  the  town  of  Sutton  for  too  severely 
punishing  two  pupils  in  a  district  school.  The  trial  at- 
tracted much  attention,  and  the  whole  town  of  Sutton, 
men,  women  and  children,  were  present  as  interested 
parties.  The  court  consisted  of  two  justices  of  the  peace. 
Pierce  was  defending  the  school  teacher.  I  cannot  re- 
member the  words  and  I  cannot  describe  his  manner,  but 
I  shall  never  forget  his  eulogium  upon  the  efforts  of  the 
school  teacher,  nor  the  scorn  with  which  he  scourged 
those  who  were  attempting  to  bring  the  teacher  into 
ridicule  and  to  defeat  the  purposes  of  education.  "But 
more  than  anything  else  is  impressed  upon  my  mind," 
says  Brother  Fellows;  "the  radiant  light  like  a  halo 
which  seemed  to  beam  into  the  face  of  General  Pierce  as 
he  made  his  appeal  for  the  school  teacher  and  the  vindi- 
cation of  good  order  and  good  morals  in  the  community." 

Franklin  Pierce  cannot  be  placed  in  the  list  of  learned 
and  profound  lawyers  with  Ira  Perley,  Jeremiah  Mason, 
Daniel  M.  Christie,  George  Y.  Sawyer,  and  many  others 
whose  lives  were  devoted  exclusively  to  law.  His  supe- 
riority was  in  his  tact,  ability  and  eloquence  before  a 
jury.  What  was  there  in  his  mental  and  physical  en- 
dowments that  fitted  him  for  a  great  advocate? 

In  the  first  place  he  had  a  love — a  passion — for  the 
law  as  a  profession,  and  an  indomitable  determination 
to  become  the  best  advocate  that  courage,  labor,  un- 
tiring zeal  and  effort  could  make  him.  This  love  is 
evidenced  from  his  declining  from  time  to  time  official 
positions  and  returning  to  the  practice  of  the  law.  This 
is  evident,  too,  from  the  enthusiasm  with  which  he  en- 
tered upon  its  pursuit. 

He  had  an  attractive  physique,  his  manner  was  grace- 
ful, yet  strong  and  manly.  There  was  a  sort  of  chivalrous 
bearing  towards  the  court,  counsel  and  witnesses,  that 


88 

won  the  respect  and  affection  of  all  who  met  him.  He 
had  the  will  power  and  the  habit  to  throw  off  for  the 
time  all  thought  of  business  and  all  anxieties,  and  to 
sleep  day  or  night  almost  as  he  wished.  He  had  won- 
derful recuperative  power.  I  have  known  him  while 
engaged  for  many  days  in  the  trial  of  an  important 
case,  to  say  to  his  associate  at  the  noon  recess,  "I  am 
tired  and  will  sleep  for  an  hour."  It  seemed  but  a 
minute  later  when  he  was  sleeping  as  a  child,  and  at 
the  end  of  an  hour's  solid  sleep  arose  refreshed  and 
ready  for  his  case. 

He  had  a  vigorous  understanding,  gifted  with  a  rare 
faculty  of  analysis.  He  had  a  quick,  inventive  fancy, 
strong  memory  and  an  impressionable  temperament.  His 
voice  was  pleasant  and  finely  modulated.  His  memory 
of  the  names  of  persons  and  localities  was  remarkable. 
This  was  a  natural  gift,  but  yet  cultivated  during  all  his 
professional  life.  He  had  an  intuitive  sense  of  "men  and 
life  by  which  the  falsehood  and  veracity  of  witnesses, 
the  probability  and  improbability  of  transactions,  as 
sworn  to,  were  discerned  in  a  moment." 

From  childhood  he  entered  sympathetically  into  the 
lives  of  all  classes.  He  had  a  frankness  and  openness  of 
manner  which  attracted  all  who  had  to  do  with  him. 
As  Hawthorne,  his  college  classmate  and  lifelong  per- 
sonal friend,  in  his  biography  published  in  1852,  in 
speaking  of  his  college  life  says:  "He  was  distinguished 
by  the  same  fascination  of  manner  that  has  proven  so 
magical  in  winning  him  an  unbounded  personal  popu- 
larity. It  is  wronging  him,  however,  to  call  this  peculi- 
arity a  mere  effect  of  manner;  its  source  lies  deep  in  the 
kindliness  of  his  nature,  and  in  the  liberal,  generous, 
catholic  sympathy  that  embraces  all  who  are  worthy  of 
it.  Few  men  possess  anything  like  it;  so  irresistible  as 
it  is,  so  sure  to  draw  forth  an  undoubting  confidence,  and 


89 

so  true  to  the  promise  which  it  gives.  It  belongs  to  him 
at  this  moment  and  will  never  leave  him." 

He  was  fair  and  just  to  every  honest  witness,  and  he 
had  the  ability  to  make  the  jury  see  and  feel  the  false- 
hood of  the  pretender  or  the  liar.  He  knew  what  would 
appeal  to  the  average  juror.  As  was  said  of  Rufus 
Choate  I  can  say  of  him,  "He  treated  every  man  as 
though  he  was  a  gentleman,  and  he  treated  every  gentle- 
man almost  as  he  would  a  lady." 

As  was  said  of  Prentiss,  "There  was  nothing  to  imply 
that  while  his  lips  were  on  fire,  his  heart  might  be  cold; 
but  every  look,  tone  and  gesture  carried  with  them  the 
conviction  that  he  was  honest,  sincere  and  spoke  the 
motives  of  his  inmost  heart  and  conscience." 

At  the  end  of  his  presidential  term  of  office  he  spent 
the  next  two  years  with  his  invalid  wife  at  the  Madeira 
Islands  and  in  foreign  travel.  Ever  since  the  death  of 
her  son  by  a  railroad  accident,  in  January,  1853,  she  had 
never  known  vigorous  health  or  freedom  from  consum- 
ing grief.  All  that  anxious,  constant  care  and  love  could 
do  was  done  by  the  General  with  the  devotion  and  ten- 
derness such  only  as  a  husband  with  the  same  deep  sor- 
row could  bestow  upon  his  sorrowing  wife.  In  December, 
1863,  Mrs.  Pierce  died,  and  General  Pierce  died  in 
October,  1869. 

Thus,  brethren,  I  have  touched  upon  Franklin  Pierce 
as  a  lawyer,  with  some  of  the  prominent  events  of  his 
life.  He  was  in  many  respects  the  most  remarkable  man 
in  the  history  of  the  state  of  New  Hampshire.  He  had 
honors  thrust  upon  him,  and  he  wore  them  modestly 
and  nobly.  He  cast  aside  high  offices  like  toys  of  small 
value,  preferring  the  routine  of  professional  life  and  his 
home  with  his  wife  and  children  and  the  enthusiastic 
friends  of  his  early  life.  He  was  called  again  to  the 
highest  office  in  the  nation,  and  administered  its  affairs 


90 

with  dignity,  with  ability,  with  honor,  and  with  the  per- 
sonal regard  of  all  who  had  to  do  with  him. 

Colonel  Forney,  a  political  opponent,  in  writing  of  him 
immediately  after*  his  death  in  1869,  among  other  things 
said:  "Let  us  think  of  Franklin  Pierce  as  a  man  of  that 
greatness  of  heart  which  constitutes  the  true  nobility 
of  character,  and  which  constantly  exhibits  itself  in 
words,  looks,  tone,  and  accents  and  works  of  kindness. 
Kindness  of  heart  was  his  great  quality.  No  exaltation 
of  station,  no  degree  of  prosperity,  no  applause  of  men, 
no  adventitious  circumstances  whatever,  caused  him  to 
overlook,  much  less  to  neglect,  an  appeal  for  aid  by  the 
lowly  and  suffering.  Thoughts  of  others  were  his  dis- 
tinguishing quality.  Who  so  forward  as  he  to  see  virtue 
in  the  humblest  guise,  and  to  recognize  and  respect  it  as 
much  or  more  than  if  the  subject  of  it  were  of  the  highest 
name  and  of  loftiest  lineage?  The  peer  in  eloquence  and 
oratory  and  argumentation  of  his  contemporaries  at  the 
bar  and  in  public  life,  yet  who  so  prompt  to  express  en- 
comium of  the  great  efforts  of  others? 

"Of  human  feelings  the  unbounded  lord,  and  there- 
fore the  charm  of  the  social  circle,  who  was  so  stricken 
by  public  or  private  misfortune?  Who  so  profoundly 
awed  by  the  dispensations  of  Divine  Providence?" 

I  shall  fail  to  give  a  fair  sketch  of  the  life  of  this  man  if 
I  omit  an  event  which  to  him  and  his  wife,  in  their  inner- 
most selves,  was  of  more  lasting  effect  than  all  else  be- 
sides. 

In  January,  1853,  before  he  had  taken  his  seat  as 
President,  while  traveling  between  Boston  and  Concord 
with  his  wife  and  only  child,  a  boy  of  eleven  years  of  age, 
the  car  was  thrown  from  the  track,  and  the  child  instantly 
killed.  It  is  an  event  too  near  the  heart  for  speech, 
written  or  spoken.  Words  of  themselves  have  no  heart- 
beat, except  to  the  few  who  have  been  compelled  by  like 


affliction  to  listen.  I  can  well  understand  how  com- 
pletely overwhelmed  was  the  delicate  and  sensitive  mother 
with  a  grief  from  which  she  could  never  recover. 

How  worthless  seemed  the  prospective  honors  and  the 
pageantry  of  the  presidential  life;  how  empty  and  vain 
all  earthly  things  in  the  presence  of  their  dead  child, 
and  what  terrible  grief  swept  over  him  as  he  saw  his 
fondest  hopes  suddenly  blasted. 

An  intimate  friend  of  the  General  told  me  that  General 
Pierce  was  never  the  same  man  after  this  event  as  before. 
Some  of  us  know  he  could  never  have  been  the  same  to 
himself,  however  he  might  appear  to  others. 

He  brought  to  this  sad  experience  the  same  will  power 
to  bear  up  wonderfully  and  heroically  and  to  go  about 
his  home  life  and  public  duties  during  his  term  of  office 
as  if  nothing  had  happened,  while  at  the  same  time  there 
was  a  continued  sense  of  something  gone  out  of  his  life 
that  he  had  counted  on,  a  longing — a  tearful  longing — 
for  that  boy  who  bore  the  honored  name  of  his  father, 
Benjamin  Pierce,  and  upon  whom  he  expected  his  own 
mantle  of  successful  life  to  fall. 

That  event  was  a  mystery.  We  cannot  explain  it. 
For  one,  I  feel,  as  I  presume  many  of  you  do,  like  reach- 
ing out  my  hands  and  calling  with  subdued  and  sad- 
dened heart,  "My  brother,  oh!  my  brother!  is  the  mys- 
tery of  life  and  death  solved?  Is  the  mystery  of  the 
death — the  tragic  death — of  that  boy  explained?  Are 
you  satisfied  that  what  then  seemed  so  grievous  and 
terrible  is  well  for  you  and  best  for  the  child?" 

This  is  not  the  time  nor  occasion  to  give  Franklin 
Pierce  his  just  and  true  position  as  a  politician  and  states- 
man. He  lived  at  a  period  in  our  history  when  the  people 
of  the  United  States  were  divided.  We  begin  to  learn 
that  there  were  patriotic  men  South  as  well  as  North; 
we  begin  to  learn  that  as  true  hearts  beat  under  the  out- 


92 

ward  covering  of  the  gray  as  the  blue ;  we  begin  to  learn 
that  Stonewall  Jackson  of  Virginia  was  as  pure  and  honest 
in  heart  and  as  true  in  patriotic  principle,  as  he  saw  his 
duty  in  the  sacrifice  of  his  life,  as  any  Northern  man. 

We  begin  to  learn  that  Daniel  Webster,  Franklin 
Pierce,  and  many  who  agreed  with  them  were  as  truly 
patriotic  as  those  who  reviled  them.  We  begin  to  feel 
with  Lincoln  "Charity  for  all." 

In  this  charitable  spirit  may  we  not  expect,  when  all 
partisan  bitterness  has  faded  away,  and  when  the  future 
historian  shall  in  historic  perspective  consider  the  sur- 
roundings, the  education,  the  prejudices,  and  the  motives 
of  all  men,  North  and  South,  that  by  the  side  of  Daniel 
Webster  in  patriotic  devotion  to  his  country  will  stand 
our  Franklin  Pierce? 

Brethren,  I  have  presented  Franklin  Pierce  as  a  New 
Hampshire  lawyer  as  well  as  the  limits  of  this  occasion 
and  my  ability  will  allow. 

He  had  his  failings,  as  may  be  said  of  every  one  of  us, 
and  they  have  been  exaggerated.  I  am  not  here  to  excuse 
or  condone  them.  He  was  our  brother  lawyer.  He  was 
a  son  of  New  Hampshire,  honored  more  by  high  official 
positions  and  more  loved  and  idolized  in  his  day  than 
any  other  member  of  our  profession  in  this  state. 

As  a  lawyer  his  integrity,  fearlessness,  indomitable 
industry  and  enthusiasm  were  unsurpassed  in  the  history 
of  our  profession  in  the  state.  He  was  persuasive  and 
resistless  by  sincere  superiority;  as  an  advocate  he  had 
no  equal  among  us.  He  never  had  a  fair-minded  client 
find  fault  with  his  efforts.  No  lawyer  of  his  years  in  the 
profession  ever  had  so  many  grateful  and  enthusiastic 
clients. 

If  the  veterans  of  the  Revolution  and  of  1812  and 
their  descendants  who  knew  him  could  speak;  if  his 
townspeople  and  others  who  knew  him  from  childhood 


93 

to  mature  years  could  speak;  if  thousands  of  people  who 
knew  the  tenderness  of  his  heart  and  the  generosity  of 
his  instincts,  and  the  lavish  wealth  of  his  affectionate 
nature  could  speak,  forgetting  or  disregarding  him  as  a 
lawyer,  senator,  general  and  president,  they  would  point 
to  the  crowning  glory  of  his  life,  his  kindness,  his  gener- 
osity, his  unselfishness  and  his  true  and  enduring  friend- 
ship. 

His  name  upon  our  records  will  be  to  us,  and  to  those 
who  shall  come  after  us,  an  inspiration  to  loftier  ideals 
in  our  profession  and  to  nobler  ambition  in  citizenship. 


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